Seasons of Sacred Celebration: Flowers and Poetry from an Imperial Convent
While attempting to organise some of my books, I came across this one. I’ve owned it for some time and have read it before, but now, re-reading it I was thrilled all over again.
It presents a set of poetry cards from the Diashoji Imperial Convent in Kyoto. Each card is reproduced on its own page and opposite are a Japanese and English version of the poem. The publishers are the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies, part of Columbia University, New York.
The poems are waka (also called tanka), a style of short poem with a long history in Japan. Like most Japanese poems they are direct and seemingly simple but say so much:
Could it be that the maple leaf
fathoms the heart of one who feeds the fire …
The book is beautiful – the illustrations are magical; the poems show new ways of looking at flowers and trees; the scholarly introduction and essay are fascinating – I learned an amazing amount; the index to the calligraphers is well organised and useful.
And there is a mystery – who initiated the production of the set of cards and why?
And they are part of women’s Buddhist history and were published to celebrate a great woman, Zen Abbess Mugai Nyodai (1223 – 1298).
What more could one want?
The cover art is from Floating World Editions.
e a m harris 
The books that bind – Jane Austen and Timbuktu
Yesterday the BBC TV news carried two literary-related items.
Yesterday marked the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Yesterday the French army seized Timbuktu, only to discover that a library of ancient manuscripts had been burned and most of the books destroyed.
What a contrast! The peace of English village life/the violence of war; a book loved/books destroyed; appreciative readers celebrating/an act of childish spite.
The arsonists have achieved nothing but to rob the world of a treasure, and to weaken an age old connection between the local people and their ancestors.
I sometimes think of books as links in a chain joining the past to the future via the present. The chain is anchored in the past when the book was first made and its links uncoil into the future for as long as it’s remembered. Each generation adds a new one.
If the book still exists the links are strong, but once it’s gone the chain depends on human memory to keep forging.
Memories of some of those old scholars who built the library and wrote the books will start to fade. They do not deserve to be forgotten.
Austen however goes from strength to strength and this year will be celebrated all over the world.
Picture from dontstepinthepoop.
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