Bamboo

The end of the Tanabata series which has been on since July 7, this time about “Bamboo”.
The Star Festival
Five Colors of Strips

At the Tanabata event, people decorate wish things in strips and decorate them with bamboo together with Tanabata decorations such as folding cranes and windsocks. It sounds silly and winds in the wind, it is very nice to have a taste. Well, why is bamboo?

Bamboo deeply involved in Japanese culture for a long time. Brought from China around the 8th century, it was initially used for rituals among nobility, etc. It seems that it was considered to be widely seen in the 16th century or later.

Many also appeared as motifs of Japanese paintings and ink paintings, and many songs were sung in haiku and Tanka. Then it is used as an important constituent element in the creation of the Japanese garden. When you step into a bamboo forest, you feel like being covered with sacred air, do not you? There was a wonderful bamboo grove in the “Buaiso” house of Shirasu Jiro & Masako, I visited the other day.

Since then, it has been widely used as bamboo crafts, building materials, furniture, fishing rods and so on. At “Atami house” designed by Bruno Taut, many bamboos are used with good sense and it seems the material fascinated Taut.

Moreover, bamboo is strong in cold winter, it is difficult to collapse with evergreen and straight, and the stretches straight is made to be one of the congratulatory plants symbolizing life force, and it is also used for Kadomatsu decorating for New Year’s Day. Although it grows fast, the inside of the bamboo stem is a hollow for some reason. Due to its mystique, ancient people embraced a kind of natural religious belief in a mysterious bamboo with a cavity. The thought that God is dwelling in the cavity gave birth to the oldest story in Japan, “Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)”. I think that it has promoted the mystery that the established year, the author’s unknown, and the story is a very mysterious science fantasy story.

And, it is an event called Tanabata where we wish for bamboo that has been sacred from long ago, when i comprehensively know the history and meaning, what I participated casually before then will make me more familiar. Then I began to think that it was a more fancy and emotional wonderful event with the help of its mystique.

The Tanabata series which has been ongoing since July 7
The Star Festival
Five Colors of Strips