* VALUE* early 1900s Meiji Japanese BRASS paperweight calligraphy shodo BRUSH

Description

Up for grabs is an early 1900s (or late 1800s; it's difficult to determine) antique Japanese Meiji era brass paperweight featuring a child student playing on a shodo (calligraphy) brush.
100% guaranteed authentic antique
. This belonged to my late father, who was an astute collector of Japanese and East Asian art and began his collection in the mid-1950s. I myself have also lived in China and Japan and am a collector.
9" long x 1cm thick at the bottom, and 1" wide at the brush. Weight is 9.8 oz.
Please see pics for exact condition; item is flawless, though it could use a good polishing if you prefer a shiny new appearance. NOTE: "Japan" sticker at bottom has been affixed since original purchase ('50s or 1960s).
Would make an ideal gift for that special student or teacher in your life
.
Ships USPS Priority out of San Francisco.
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The Meiji era (明治時代, Meiji jidai) is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization by Western powers to the new paradigm of a modern, industrialized nation state and emergent great power, influenced by Western scientific, technological, philosophical, political, legal, and aesthetic ideas. As a result of such wholesale adoption of radically different ideas, the changes to Japan were profound, and affected its social structure, internal politics, economy, military, and foreign relations. The period corresponded to the reign of Emperor Meiji. It was preceded by the Keiō era and was succeeded by the Taishō era, upon the accession of Emperor Taishō.
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Japanese calligraphy (書道, shodō) also called shūji (習字) is a form of calligraphy, or artistic writing, of the Japanese language. For a long time, the most esteemed calligrapher in Japan had been Wang Xizhi, a Chinese calligrapher from the 4th century, but after the invention of Hiragana and Katakana, the Japanese unique syllabaries, the distinctive Japanese writing system developed and calligraphers produced styles intrinsic to Japan. The term shodō (書道, "way of writing") is of Chinese origin as it is widely used to describe the art of Kanji, Chinese calligraphy, during the medieval Tang dynasty.
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Sensei, Seonsaeng or Xiansheng (先生) is an honorific term shared in Japanese, and Chinese; it is literally translated as "person born before another" or "one who comes before". In general usage, it is used, with proper form, after a person's name and means "teacher"; the word is also used as a title to refer to or address other professionals or persons of authority, such as clergy, accountants, lawyers, physicians and politicians or to show respect to someone who has achieved a certain level of mastery in an art form or some other skill, e.g., accomplished novelists, musicians, artists and martial artists.
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Kanji (漢字) refers to logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana. The characters have Japanese pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After World War II, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai, by a process similar to China's simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3,000 kanji used in Japanese names and in common communication.