I just found a cool description of Japanese wax resist (“batik”) dyeing (rōketsuzome/ろうけつ染め) at Blue Lotus. This way of adding a design to cloth goes back to the Nara period (710–794)(ja.wp:ろうけつ染め) and is one technique that was used to put designs such as mon on kimono. This is something I’ve been wanting to experiment with for a while, and it’s nice to see an easy-to-read description of the modern process in English.
One of the classes I enjoyed this week at Pennsic University was Lady Roxanne’s Guide to Sewing Kosode and “Kimono” (handout soon to be available online at Yama Kaminari). I learned how to make kimono many years ago from my friend Chisato, and have made some modifications along the way, so I thought I’d post [...]
July 26, 2010 - 1:40 am
Tags: Edo period, Hachiman, Heian period, Nara period, Shimabara Rebellion, Shintō, tomoe
Posted in Mon | No comments
This week, we look at another religious symbol that’s a mite less controversial. The tomoe (巴) is a comma- or swirl-shaped design with a variety of possible origins. It resembles ancient Japanese curved jewels (such as the jewel that serves as one of the three Japanese imperial regalia).(en.wp:Tomoe) Other possible origins associate it with a [...]
July 19, 2010 - 1:09 am
Tags: Hachisuka Iemasa, Nara period, Sengoku period, Shimabara Rebellion, swastika, Tsugaru Nobuhira
Posted in Mon | No comments
Today we discuss a controversial mon element (and one you definitely cannot use in the SCA): the swastika. The swastika (卍 or 万字/manji), among many other symbolic uses, has always represented Buddhism in Japan, a use that dates back to the 5th century BCE in India. In Buddhism, the swastika represents dharma, harmony, and the [...]
July 9, 2010 - 3:53 pm
Tags: Nara period, Nihon Shoki, SCA, Shōtoku
Posted in Literature | No comments
Just a quick one this week, since I’m off to the war. I was looking through translated excerpts of the Nihon Shoki(SoTJ:48), and I came across some imperial edicts very similar in style to the award scrolls used in the modern Society for Creative Anachronism. Since the Nihon Shoki, as an early Nara period work, [...]
March 22, 2010 - 2:36 am
Tags: Ashikaga, chrysanthemum, Edo period, Kamakura period, Nara period, paulownia
Posted in Mon | No comments
Mon, or Japanese crests, are one of my favorite Japanese design elements. Mon served much the same purpose as European heraldry: they were used for identification on the battlefield, to mark personal property, and to show family relationships, and sometimes they were given by a superior as a mark of honor. Mon are much simpler, [...]
February 22, 2010 - 12:14 am
Tags: figures of speech, Hundred Poets, Man'yōshū, Nara period, pillow word, Shōnagon
Posted in Poetry | No comments
The word “pillow” (枕 or ‘makura’) seems to have been a popular metaphor in Japan. We have the concept of a pillow book, a ‘public journal’ prose form conceptually similar to a modern blog, the most famous of which is The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon. There’s also various pillow-related imagery in Japanese poetry, for [...]
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