ARABIC CALLIGRAPHY BY A JAPANESE EXPERT

For Kouichi Honda, writing a beautiful line is what life is about. The 61-year-old professor of international relations at Daito Bunka University in Saitama Prefecture is Japan’s leading authority on Arabic calligraphy. He is known around the world as one of the best Arabic calligraphers alive today. Some of his works were last year accorded the tremendous honor of being included in the permanent collection of the British Museum in London. Honda’s unique journey began when he graduated from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies with Arabic as his major Honda got a job with a Tokyo-based surveying company that had contracts with several Middle Eastern governments to create maps. It was during this time that he discovered the art of Arabic calligraphy. Then, after he returned to Japan, Honda continued to study the art, but all by himself. His teachers were textbooks he had brought from Saudi Arabia, and he made the pens himself out of wooden chopsticks. It was also during this period, four or five years after his return to Japan, that he became a Muslim and adopted the Islamic name of Fuad., meaning “heart.”