On Sunday, November 15, 2015, students from the Japanese Literature Program, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, won first, second, and third place in the general level Shuuji Contest (Japanese Calligraphy Competition) organized by the Japanese Language Education Student Association of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (Nikkigakka) as part of the Japanese language skill competition titled NihonGO!3. The three winners were Ratih Dewi Alan, Astuti Puspariani, and Aulia Ilmi Mardhotillah. In the one-hour competition, all three successfully produced their best calligraphy
“Alhamdulillah, I didn’t expect to win this competition,” said Ratih, the first-place winner of this year’s general category Shuuji Contest. The kanji (Japanese characters) she wrote was 深夜 (shinya), which means ‘midnight.’ The beauty, neatness, stroke order, and balance of the characters contributed to Ratih’s success in winning first place.
Ratih added that the seven participants from Universitas Gadjah Mada who took part in the competition were members of the Shuuji Club of the Japanese Literature Program, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, UGM. They had prepared for the competition to produce their best work. During the preparation, they were guided by a foreign student, Ms. Akane Kimoto from Aichi Prefectural University, who was doing an internship at our program at the time.
Besides the Shuuji Contest, four other competition categories were held at the Mini Theatre of the UMY Library, including Roudoku (Japanese text reading contest), Kana Contest (Japanese script reading contest), Manga Contest (comic drawing contest), and Speech Contest (Japanese speech contest).
With the existence of this competition, it is hoped that more similar competitions will be held to enhance the participants’ skills and increase public knowledge about Japanese culture, which is still rarely explored, such as Japanese calligraphy (Shuuji).
