Zach awry in Japan

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2 January 2008 Some Paintings by Yoshinobu Taniguchi

 

These are scans of postcards created by my shakuhachi teacher, who is almost as amazing an artist as he is a shakuhachi player.

He is incredibly prolific, turning out small stuff like these postcards and much larger paintings and pieces of calligraphy at a rapid rate. I have a bunch of his stuff, much of which he painted especially for me, with my (Japanese shakuhachi) name and various and sundry words of encouragement. I’ll probably post some of that stuff later, but for now some smaller work.

 

The two main characters here spell out chikuzen, or “bamboo zen.” For hundreds of years in its history the shakuhachi was played almost exclusively by zen monks. All of the characters in red are from his formidable collection of hanko (stamps, chops, etc.). This, as the next one, is similar stylistically to traditional representations of Boddhidharma, who brought Buddhism to China from India.

 

This next one has the characters for zen and katsu, zen being zen and katsu being….er….I wish I were a better translator….let’s say, the vitality that you put into any activity that you really care about. The smaller words say: “Since you’ve been born a human being in this world this time around, live strongly strongly strongly strongly strongly strongly!”

 

Finally, another favorite subject of his is the Kannon, who is the bodhisattva of compassion and fulfills very much the same roll in Buddhism as Mary does in Christianity.