Shōko Kanazawa

Shōko Kanazawa (金澤翔子 Kanazawa Shōko, born 1985 ) is a Japanese calligrapher.

Biography
Kanazawa was born in Tokyo and diagnosed with Down syndrome. Her mother, Yasuko Kanazawa, had studied calligraphy under Taiun Yanagida. When Shōko was five years old, Yasuko opened a calligraphy school at her home in Ōta, Tokyo where she began teaching her daughter calligraphy as well.

At the age of ten, Shōko Kanazawa had, according to her mother, learned the basics of calligraphy, and was able to write a sutra consisting of 276 characters. In 2001, she won her first award at a calligraphy student exhibition. In December 2005, Kanazawa had her first solo exhibition in Ginza, Tokyo.

Her calligraphy is characterized by its large scale, her largest work to date being 15 meters long. She frequently performs her calligraphy in public, including at temples and shrines such as Kenchō-ji in Kamakura, Tōdai-ji in Nara, Kennin-ji in Kyoto, Chūson-ji in Iwate Prefecture, and Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture.

Several exhibition spaces are dedicated specifically to her calligraphy works: the Shōko Kanazawa Art Museum in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, opened in 2012, the Sinary Shōko Kanazawa Museum in Kyoto, opened in 2015, and the Shoko Kanazawa Museums in Ginza, Tokyo and Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture.

In 2012, Kanazawa designed the titles of the NHK television drama series Taira no Kiyomori.

Outside of Japan, Kanazawa has had exhibitions in New York, Pilsen and Prague, all in 2015, and in Singapore in 2016.

On May 20, 2015, she gave a speech at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on the occasion of World Down Syndrome Day. For the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Kanazawa designed one of the official art posters; she and Kōji Kakinuma were the only calligraphers among the participating poster artists.

Kanazawa became the subject of a documentary film titled Tomo ni ikiru: Shoka Kanazawa Shōko (Living Together: Calligrapher Shōko Kanazawa), which was directed by Masaaki Miyazawa and released in Japan on June 2, 2023.

Japan Forward called her the most famous living calligrapher in Japan, and perhaps the most famous calligrapher in the world. The newspaper also said she may be the world's most famous person with Down syndrome.