It produced an intensely Elitist, nobly disciplined and masculine culture whose emblems were the ink brush, the samurai sword and the tea bowl.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | The Subtle Magic of Koetsu

But if brevity is to be deplored, what should we make of haiku, sonnets, and ink-brush calligraphy?

ECONOMIST: Will reading and writing remain important?

Sunlight shines through the paper in the sliding doors, casting latticework shadows on the tatami mat floor in the room where Hiroko Harada arranges the tools of her art: paper, brush, ink and inkstone.

BBC: The art of Japan

By contrast, virtually every work in "The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth Century China" warrants its own essay on the composition's literary or political allusions, the lineage of its brushwork, and the personal and historical context in which the painter dipped brush into ink.

WSJ: Paths Easy and Daunting | Ming Masterpieces | Artful Recluse | Lacma | Asia Society | By Lee Lawrence

Like his medium, his method combines the old and the new: he draws with a traditional Japanese brush dipped in ink, but adds occasional colour on a Mac.

ECONOMIST: Japanese cartoons