Shōko Kanazawa

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

Early life and career Kanazawa was born in Tokyo in 1985 and diagnosed with Down syndrome. Her mother, Yasuko Kanazawa, had studied calligraphy under Taiun Yanagida, another notable calligraphist. 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.

Her first solo exhibition, The World of Calligraphy, was held in December 2005 in Ginza, Tokyo. People were moved to tears, and the gallery attracted recognition in newspapers and online. 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. the Sinary Shōko Kanazawa Museum in Kyoto, opened in 2015, and the Shoko Kanazawa Museums in Ginza, Tokyo and Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture.

She has also staged some solo exhibitions. One of them begin the Mori Art Center Gallery in Roppongi Hills. Her solo exhibition in Mori Art Center Gallery is called "Tsuki no Hikari" . The gallery is divided into three parts, showing traces of around fifty of her works. Plzeň 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.

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.

Aside from her artwork, she co-authored with her mother several books about calligraphy, from Tamashii no sho (Calligraphy of the Soul) to Umi no uta, yama no koe (Songs of the Sea, Voices of the Mountain).

At the age of 30, she took the step of living independently from her mother, making and eating her own meals.