ABSTRACT
Drawing on ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies on instruction and instructed action, this chapter provides an auto-ethnographic account of a novice calligrapher who is being instructed in the production of a character over a series of lessons. This chapter highlights topically relevant properties in Japanese calligraphy lessons; particularly, the interactional work of instructing and following instructions for mastering what I gloss as the ways of the brush. In this chapter, I argue that the instructed actions in the calligraphy lesson are oriented to the achievement of an embodied and accountable correspondence between the model and the being drawn character at hand. The analysis shows that the ways of the brush are demonstrably instructed by the teacher, embodied in the model, and structured as an in situ resource for further instructions and as a lived criterion for evaluating, determining, and improving the student's performance.
