花鳥風月 kachō fūgetsu Beauties of Nature

The beautiful things of nature, and the pleasure of looking at them and making poems of them: the phrase carries both senses, and the second is the older. Four characters in two pairs, flowers and birds, the painter's subject, and wind and moon, the poet's; the pairs are Chinese, and Japan set them in this order as one phrase six hundred years ago; Sōgi, the master of linked verse, used it, and the haikai poets of the seventeenth century took it up, for the elegant world a poem is built from. The order is fixed, and the four-word literal is the standard English; the house title names the things, and the pleasure taken in them is the half this page puts back. Whether it is for the four things or for the pastime of enjoying them is yours.

花鳥風月 is a particularly beautiful expression as it is composed of four of nature's most beautiful creations which are 花 (read ka) meaning "flowers", 鳥 (read chō) meaning "birds", 風 (read fū) meaning "wind", and 月 (read getsu) meaning "moon".

A Japanese phrase that sets two Chinese pairs, flowers and birds, wind and moon, in an order the Chinese did not use; in Zeami's treatise on Noh by 1402, and in a primer and a war tale of about the same age, it names the arts a cultivated person pursues, and it names the beauty of nature itself as well.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 花鳥風月.

Each design is Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's hand-brushed calligraphy of the word or phrase on this page, delivered as a PDF you can print. Every PDF includes the line art, so a tattoo artist or a craftsperson can work from the outline as well as the brushed image.

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