Basic emotions common to different Kansei expressions: impression of Japanese calligraphy

摘要

At the beginning of investigation into Kansei expressions in calligraphy, two specialists chose 49 works (Japanese and Chinese calligraphies) which represent Kansei including basic emotions, and the works were exposed to 69 students who were asked to write five words (impressions) for each work. As a result, the adjectives related to the feature of their characters and handwritings (e.g." thin", "powerful", "old", "pretty", "faint") were frequently used in their impression, while the words related to emotions were rarely found ("sad" and "lonely" were less than five times, and "anger" and "surprise" were never found.) As a whole, it was suggested that students tend to easily react and like powerful and rhythmical works.