The Red Seal on Japanese Calligraphy: Rakkan and Seals Explained

What rakkan means

Rakkan (落款) is a shortened form of rakusei kanshi (落成款識), which roughly means an inscription marking a finished work. In practice it refers to the signature and seal an artist adds to a blank area near the edge of a painting or calligraphy piece once it is complete.

The Japanese art history dictionary JAANUS notes that a rakkan can include more than a name and a seal. It may also record the date the work was made, the place or circumstances, and the artist's age or titles. JAANUS also notes that sealing finished paintings appears to have become accepted in Japan only in the 12th century, and that signing and sealing became regular in Japanese painting in the late Muromachi period.

Reading a seal: white characters and red characters

Seals are carved in one of two ways. In a hakubun (白文) seal, the characters are cut into the stone, so the print shows white characters on a red background. In a shubun (朱文) seal, the area around the characters is cut away, so the characters themselves print in red.

The characters on artists' seals are often written in seal script (tensho), an ancient Chinese script that looks quite different from everyday kanji. That is why many people cannot read a seal even when they can read the calligraphy above it. Carving seals is its own art, called tenkoku.

• Hakubun: white characters on a red background
• Shubun: red characters on a white background
• Seal script is common, so seals can be hard to read

The main types of seal and where they go

Japanese calligraphy guides usually describe a set of seal types, each with a typical position. Traditional Japanese is written from top to bottom and right to left, so the signature and its seals tend to come at the end, at the lower left of a piece.

• Seimei-in (姓名印), the name seal: the artist's real name, often in white characters. When two seals are used, it goes on top.
• Gago-in (雅号印), the art-name seal: the artist's pen name, often in red characters, placed below the name seal and usually the same size.
• Inshu-in (引首印), the opening seal: placed at the upper right where the text begins, often an upright rectangle or oval carrying a phrase or motto.
• Oukyaku-in (押脚印): a decorative seal sometimes placed at the lower right.

Leisure seals (yuin)

A yuin (遊印), literally a play seal or leisure seal, carries a favorite word, phrase, or picture instead of a name. It is described as decorative, and the name reflects that it is not used for practical purposes such as signing for deliveries or sealing documents.

Terms overlap between sources. Some guides use yuin for any decorative seal, including the lower-right seal, and some use rakkan-in as a general word for all seals on an artwork. If you see slightly different explanations in different books, that is normal.

Rakkan seals are not official seals

Japan also uses personal seals (inkan or hanko) for contracts, banking, and receiving parcels. Rakkan seals are separate. They are made for artwork and hobbies, not for official documents, and an artist may own several of them in different sizes and styles.

Art historians also use seals and signatures to help judge who made a work and whether it is authentic. JAANUS adds a caution that later additions and alterations are common, so a seal alone is not proof.

Seals and a beginner class

In a beginner class the focus is on brush and ink: how to hold the brush, how to make basic strokes, and how to finish one piece you are happy with. If you are interested in how the signature and seals on a finished work are arranged, ask the teacher during the class. Seeing the layout on a real piece makes the conventions above much easier to follow.