Hokusai remains one of my favourite Japanese artists - not because of his famous painting "The Great Wave', but because his mastery of the brush allowed him to blend pictorial representation with the rhythmic energy of written characters, which always fascinated me. How can combine strict rules imposed on artists back then and yet offer intense, wavering, and lively calligraphic energy?

Lady Shizu, historically known as Shizuka Gozen, is one of the most famous and tragic figures in Japanese history. She was a renowned 12th-century shirabyoshi (court dancer) and the lover of the tragic hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune.

When sketching Lady Shizu—most notably in his instructional manual Ippitsu Gafu (Album of Drawings with One Stroke of the Brush)—Hokusai relied on the visual language of Japanese kana (specifically hiragana). Using the ippitsugaki (one-stroke) technique, Hokusai rendered her entire form—from the curve of her back to the trailing edge of her robes—with a single, virtually unbroken movement of the brush.