Mieko and the Fifth Treasure by Eleanor Coerr Read Free Book Online

the softly falling snow.

Author’s Note
    When writing developed in China and Japan thousands of years ago, people did not use letters as we know them but pictures to explain what they meant. The pictures, which today are called “characters,” have changed very little over the centuries. They are made up of strokes which, in everyday writing, are produced with pens or pencils. But the Japanese believe that picture-writing with a brush can be great art, and this is the kind of artist Mieko wanted to be.
    Many Japanese characters still look almost like what they mean. “Mountain” looks like a mountain:

    And “tree” looks something like a tree:

    Other words, like “friendship,” are more complicated. The everyday way to write “friendship” is like this:

    When painted with a brush, the word-picture looks like this:

    This is how the word-picture looked when Mieko put her feelings for Yoshi into the prizewinning brushstrokes.