Hiragana is one of three components of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji. As a phonetic syllabary, each of the 46 characters represents a sound, and for the most part, each sound in the Japanese language—known specifically as mora—corresponds to one character.
For illustrator and fiber artist Tomoko Kubo, the lettering system sparked an ongoing series of embroideries that also function as playful linguistic learning tools.
Kubo embeds imagery into the form of each character. Pictured above, for example, is the character う, which is used for the syllable “u.” The artist’s composition visualizes words that begin with that character: a horse (うま), a rabbit (うさぎ), and a beach (うみべ).
Kubo began the series after participating in an exhibition in late 2021 in which a group of artists collectively created a picture book, with each person responsible for designing one page. “I embroidered the hiragana character ‘y’ (よ), and it turned out beautifully,” Kubo tells Colossal. “That experience sparked the idea to start embroidering hiragana characters.”
Starting with syllables from her own name, the first characters the artist embroidered were “to” (と) and “mo” (も). Kubo was spurred by an overwhelmingly positive reception on social media, and she plans to complete the entire hiragana series between other illustration and craft projects.
Find more on Kubo’s website. (via Spoon & Tamago)
