Gathering of Good Omens

瑞気集門 (zuiki shūmon): auspicious air gathers at the gate. 瑞気 is the air that attends a good omen, 集 is gathers, and 門 is the gate, and by the gate the house and family behind it: may good fortune gather at this house. The phrase comes from 墨場必携 (Bokujō hikkei), the phrase book Japanese calligraphers have kept by the brush since 1836, where it sits among the wishes for spring. It is what one writes at New Year or over a door: a letter manual of 1879 has it in a New Year's greeting, a Meiji schoolchild copied it, and in 1891 a priest of Dazaifu Tenmangū brushed the four large characters for an inn at Nikkō, where a traveller found them over the transom.