The fourteenth syllable in the Iroha Karuta is “ka” and once again my two karuta decks offer different proverbs. In this blog post I’ll look at the proverb that illustrates “ka” in my ANGEL® deck. Today’s proverb goes like this: 可愛い子には旅をさせKawaii ko ni wa tabi wo sase Okay, let’s break [Read more…]
Ted Hughes (1930–1998) was an English poet with a deep sense of the shamanic power of myth. He believed he had uncovered a structural mythic pattern in fourteen or fifteen of Shakespeare’s mature plays. This pattern consisted of two parts, which first appear in two of Shakespeare’s narrative poems: Venus [Read more…]
The merry Japanese merchant in the illustration of the thirteenth Japanese proverb in the Iroha Karuta series reminds of the Nine of Cups tarot card, which, in the Morgan-Greer interpretation of the Rider Waite tarot, depicts a medieval European type of “merry merchant” beaming beneath nine goblets. The thirteenth card [Read more…]
This is the twelfth in the series of Japanese Iroha Karuta playing card deck. Both of my karuta decks use the same proverb to illustrate the twelfth syllable in the “Iroha” hiragana syllabry. However, the twelfth syllable poses Iroha Karuta deck designers with a bit of a problem. That is [Read more…]
When Macbeth doubts that he should murder King Duncan he muses that, “He hath honored me of late, and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people…” The phrase “all sorts of people” can be translated into Japanese like this: あらゆる種類の人々 – “Arayuru shurui no hitobito.” Shurui = [Read more…]
The eleventh syllable in the traditional Japanese Hiragana syllabary is “Ru” (“る”). In the picture card we can see a Japanese gentleman inspecting a massive gemstone, or perhaps a crystal ball, which is shining brilliantly on its portable display stand. Translation The word for “crystal” is “hari” in Japanese. In [Read more…]
In my previous post about the Japanese “Iroha Karuta” playing card game I looked at a common proverb used to illustrate the tenth card in the sequence. The tenth card illustrates the tenth syllable in the old Japanese syllabary, the syllable “nu”. That proverb was about a lotus growing in [Read more…]
A lot of the local trains that head out of Hiroshima Station on the JR Sanyo line that takes you past Miyajima terminate at Iwakuni. Iwakuni is famous for its picturesque Kintaikyo Bridge (I should really take some pics of it to post on Liketu), the US Marine base, and… [Read more…]
I was in Nagasaki earlier this month to see my daughter performing with her Cheerleading group at their university festival. While I was there I had the opportunity to visit a few shrines and temples and the one that most impressed me was Sōfukuji (崇福寺), a temple that was built for the [Read more…]
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