The first character in the center is the old character form of Shibuya.
You hardly ever see it nowadays, but this character was used until around the early Showa period. It seems some Japanese people still use this old character form in their surnames.
This character is a kanji meaning “bitter taste,” “to stagnate,” “not smooth,” or “not progressing smoothly.” And there exists an even more difficult old character form.
For information on Shibuya’s current kanji and its etymology, please see here.
Explanation of this calligraphy work
The vertical writing in the center is kanji. The horizontal writing on the left is hiragana. The horizontal writing on the right is katakana. This piece expresses all characters as if they were crossed.
