Cursive · sōsho 草書 · VC4B
Cursive or sōsho (草書) styles are the most simplified styles and Master Takase's favorite. While very beautiful, these styles are often difficult to read even by specialists.
花鳥風月
kachō fūgetsu
Beauties of Nature
Flower, bird, wind, moon. Four of nature's most beautiful things in one phrase.
by Master Eri Takase
Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Eri Takase received the rank of Shihan, master, from two calligraphy societies, the Bokuteki-kai and Bunka-shodō, and won best-of-category awards in all-Japan national competitions. She has created calligraphy for people around the world for more than thirty years, and with your order she will be creating calligraphy for you.
In a ritual as old as calligraphy itself, Master Takase prepares the ink, meditatively rubbing the ink stick against the stone until it reaches the perfect consistency for the paper. Then, properly loading the brush with ink, she brushes your scroll. And only when the scroll is just right and meets her approval, she signs it and affixes her seal, completing your original scroll.
12 1/4" × 43" (31 × 109 cm) Japanese Scrolls
The scrolls have woven damask borders and special layered Japanese paper (washi), designed to last generations by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, with whom we have worked for over two decades.
Gift-Ready
Your scroll arrives boxed, with a printed insert describing the words in detail.
Sending it as a gift? Add your message at checkout and we will include it with the insert.
Ships in 1-3 days from Washington State
Your scroll is brushed when you order it and completed within 1 to 3 business days.
Your scroll ships from Master Takase's studio in Washington State. Shipping is calculated at checkout. We ship worldwide.
30-day money-back guarantee
Every order is covered by our 30-day money-back guarantee. If your scroll arrives damaged, or we made an error, we replace it or refund you in full, including shipping.
Explanation
花鳥風月, read kachō fūgetsu: flowers, birds, wind and moon.
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 genre and the poet's spring, and wind and moon, the clear breeze and bright moon of Chinese verse; 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 English of the print catalogues and the reference books; the house title names the things, and the pleasure taken in them is the half this page puts back.
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.
Learn More About These Words
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.
