One of my favorite brushes is a sanba (山馬) brush.
Sanba means “mountain (山) horse (馬)” but it’s not of horsehair. It’s made of hair of a wild deer that lives in the interior Vietnam, and because that wild deer is called “sanma” in that area, it was named “sanba” using kanji山 (san) and馬 (uma) (which is pronounced as sanba as one word). The left in the picture is the sanba, and the right is a common brush.
It has the hardest hair of the brushes. Now the number of wild deer has decreased in Vietnam, which has made the sanba brushes difficult to obtain and expensive.
The picture shows the four brothers of sanba (laugh). The sanba brush with long hair is expensive, and it doesn’t last long while it is expensive…
It is a hassle to wash the brush, and as each hair is coarse, it gets broken if it is washed hard.
When writing with it…it feels hard!
Sanba hair does not contain a lot of ink because of its nature.
Scratchy, strong, and sharp lines are its characteristics, but because this brush is difficult to write with, it’s not common.
Also, there is an interesting brush called nanayou sansaba (七羊三山馬).
This is a unique brush with soft wool and sanba in the ratio of 7 to 3.
I use these brushes depending on the atmosphere of words and poems to be written, and what I like about the sanba brush is its uncalculated lines most of all. Because the brush doesn’t go as I imagine, it can bring unexpectedly interesting lines.
