28 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX
kaisho. The simplification here refers to the fact that these two styles con-
nect many strokes into single strokes, or in extreme cases, even simplify
entire kanji to single strokes. However, this does not make them simpler to
read - far from it, the simplifications can make it much harder to tell certain
kanji apart, or look up in a dictionary. Gyousho is usually associated with
handwriting: while we can all write leĴers the way they come rolling out
of a printer, we have a special way to write everything if we do it by hand,
and in Japanese this is expressed through a slightly more flowing form of
kanji and kana, connecting strokes but, quite often, preserving most of the
looks of a kanji. Sousho, on the other hand, is the highly stylised simplifi-
cations associated with brush calligraphy - shapes are simplified according
to reasonably rigid rules, but these simplifications look drastically differ-
ent from the original shape, and certain shapes are simplified in such a
way that it is nearly impossible to tell one from another without having re-
ceived some form of education in reading and writing brush calligraphy.
Illustrating this again using the poem:
The poem, in style