Plum Series - Jin Nong

One of the most famous painters of #Plum trees and blossoms and other plants  was *JinNong  / #ChinNung a 18th c. Qing dynasty member of the 8 eccentrics of Yangzhou.

He combines the boneless / mogu technique with a lighter more delicate touch for the blossom which contrasts with his unique calligraphy style a fusion of three different scripts types!

Plum Haiku by YAYOO

A #haiku by an 18th c. poet Yayoo

Ume no chiru / atari ya sumi no / akidawara

This sounds rather plain in translation

Plum ( presumably blossoms not fruit sicne the verb is chiru) scatter
touching ! charcoal empty sack

aki is a prefix here and means empty

sumi no so not just black or dark but speficially charcoal !

Plum blossoms in Japan can be white or crimson

a breeze or wind is implied

An empty sack has been placed outside or near a door to be refilled

and three separate ordinary events and things become one vivid image of the beauty of simple things.

PLUM TEST

#plum #hanzi #kanji #test
A test of #Cultural #differences.
Do you respond to the colors in this image by thinking of fruit or flowers?
I've tried to include within the gradient and stroke colors seen on fruit and blossom or jam.

Do you think of blood plums or red fruit with orange gold flesh or purple or crimson fruits or plum jam?

Do you think of plum sauce preserved plums plum blossom white or crimson or given which kanji / hanzi I used do you think of a whole tree and its branches?

Let me know !

New Technozi Series Plums !

The next #technozi series will be on the topic of #plums #plum #plumblossom

the #plum in art and poetry particularly #haiku and of course #hanzi / #kanji too

Don't forget there are two separate characters one for the tree and another for the fruit and blossom. Please Follow this blog or follow me on Google Plus or Twitter  to get notifications of exactly when I add new posts to this series.

Thank You

SHIKI ON SUMMER

#shiki #haiku #summer

SHIKI Masaoka

A HAIKU about SUMMER

#Hiragana #Romaji

くんぶぅゃ Kumpū ya!

せんざんのみどり Senzan no midori

てらひとっ Tera hitotsu

Kumpū also written kunpū

Kun 薰 Fragrance + Fu 風 Wind Breeze

Sen 1000 Zan is San Mountain of greem midori

Tera buddhist temple hitotsu one single

Fragrant Breeze !

Amidst a thousand green mountains

A single temple.

He must have been somewhere very remote for there to have been just one small temple and not a whole complex given the fondness of the Japanese for building temples and shrines atop mountains.

Fragrant breeze is a KIGO for summer or late spring so while I've seen one translator suggest pines for the source many trees flower in summer.

Perhaps a remote valley too small to be worth farming but just enough room for a shrine and trees?

MONJU

#MONJU #japaneseart #lacquer

Images of Monju on Secular Objects like Woodcut Ukiyo-e prints and Lacquer may have had a gender and sexual orientation significance

While this is fairly close to traditional Buddhist iconography note that he is shown as a young man or teenager rather than as an adult.

The tradition of one of the forms of Manjusri / Monju being a young man became part of Japanese male homosexual culture.

How can I say it politely.

A lot of 18th century Ukiyo-e prints of Monju shown as a pretty boy actor are probably PINUP ART !

So the next time you see a print labelled actor so and so dressed for Lion Dance or Kabuki Actor so and so playing Monju ....

MMM given women visited the theatre too I wonder if any of them had boxes full of prints of favorite male actors  taken out in rare moments of privacy and explained to the rest of the family as pictures of MONJU ...

It is a lovely piece of lacquer though whether the owner was a devout Buddhist or trying to signal their orientation and preferences given these inro were used predominantly by men. 

Hotei in Lacquer

#hotei #lacquer #japanese 

I found one last #Hotei image on share with you !

Not maki-e but still a beautiful example of a functional object that's also exquisite sculpture!

4 Uguisu Haiku

4 #haiku with #Uguisu #JapaneseBushWarbler as a theme.

I will provide the romaji and my notes and translation for each

Slash / = LINE BREAK

#Onitsura

Uguisu ya / Ume ni tomaru / Mukashi kara

Uguisu exclamation plum on/ at perching / ancient times since

Oh the bush warbler perching on plum trees since antiquity !

#Issa

Uguisu ya / doro ashi nuguu / ume no hana

uguisu ! / dirty feet cleaning / plum blossoms

Oh Uguisu cleaning your dirty feet on the plum blossoms?

Japanese plum blossoms are usually white or sometimes red not pink like Sakura cherry.

Two Women writers

#Chiyo

Uguisu no / dochira ka naku zo / mizu no kage

bush warbler of in connection to place / where who singing / water of shadow  !

I presume the last line means the bush warbler was hidden by shadows at the edge of a stream?

#Chigetsu-ni

Uguisu ni / temoto yasumenu / nagashimoto

ni here means nearby
temoto manual work yasumenu comers from yasumemu rather than yasumeru but the meaning is nearly identical

she hears the bird and stops her work while in the kitchen area nagashimoto of her home

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