Departures of note

In 1998, Shingai Tanaka was invited by Radio France to perform at the music festival '98 Presence', where he improvised 24 calligraphy works live on stage, responding to the images and inspirations of music played by pianist Thierry Ravassard. The compositions were created by twenty French composers, including Gilbert Amy and Pascal Dusapant, each of whom selected a haiku from the 24 poems of the four seasons and composed music based on the poem's imagery. The concert was well received, leading to three further performances at the National Supreme Academy of Music in Lyon, and Muzzik European Channel began filming the project for worldwide release from 2001 to 2002 across the four seasons in Japan.

Tanaka was born in 1942 in Tottori, Japan, and studied under Master Goshin Yasui, becoming one of the country's leading shodō artists. In the 1980s, he founded the Kyoto Calligraphers Association (Kyoto shodō Renmei) to promote Japanese calligraphy. He served as president of Sho International and the Kyoto Artists Calligraphy Association, and was a special professor at Kyoto Saga University of Arts.

From 1987, Tanaka divided his time between France and Japan, teaching shodō to students and artists in Lyon, Milan, and Kyoto. From 1998 until his death, he gave lectures at the Japanese Center in Lyon and in Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. He also collaborated with crystal sound musician Michel Deneuve in Paris, performed experimental 'music and the art of the moment' works in the Netherlands, and performed at St. Jean Cathedral in Lyon in December 2000, as well as in a concert with two Japanese musicians playing the traditional Yokobue bamboo flute in October 2001.

Tanaka exhibited worldwide and received Kyoto's Art and Culture Award in 2005. Reflecting on his work, he wrote: 'For me, to create an art work of shodō is to prove that I am worth living and that I can find my identity. I want to show, through my works, all that I feel and think about life and nature. The motif, namely the character by which I intend to express something, has an inevitable meaning for me in creating a work.' He died on 6 October 2007 in Kyoto.