Originally from Kyoto’s Higashiyama district, an area with many Kiyomizu porcelain kilns, Chikako Thomsen remembers growing up in a busy atmosphere where “one workshop jostled up to the next and the roads were covered with pottery shards.”

Although she comes from a family whose involvement in the porcelain trade goes back several generations, as a child she found herself fascinated with painting and calligraphy. At an early age she became a student of the artist Akamatsu Ryô (1933-1996), a leading Kyoto Nihonga master during the post-war era. Later on, she continued her study of Nihonga in the Kyoto Art College.

Her formal study of calligraphy also began at an early age, and for twenty years she was a student under Fukada Hôsen, a close follower of Hibino Gohô. One of the most important Japanese calligraphers of this past century, Gohô was an advocate of the kana style, specifically the kana of the Heian period, a practice he felt had been neglected during the late Edo and Meiji periods. 

Based on his reinterpretation of traditional calligraphic styles, the kana movement founded by Gohô continues in the work of Chikako Thomsen. Not simply a member of this school, Chikako hopes that she carries on Gohô’s teaching as she forms her own interpretations of the artistic styles that have been passed down to her. 

In addition to having taught calligraphy in both Japan and the United States, she has exhibited her work in a number of shows, including one at the Kyoto Municipal Museum and, most recently, at Princeton University.