Skull, bones and grave markers

[Ron STL]

This request is related to the tanto with the double mon kogai I asked about. I decided it would be interesting to expand the JSS/US article on the skull theme tanto koshirae and include an old article on the subject. This was an article by the late Kensho Furuya titled, "Gaikotsu - The Skull Motif in Japanese Sword Fittings," JSS/US Newsletter, July-August 1995. The last two pages of that article pictures five tsuba. Rather than reproducing these preprinted photos, being I think known tsuba, can anyone come up with more clear photos of these tsuba or at least direct me to a book they might be in?

 

It might also be interesting to share your own photos of this motif that you would allow me to include in this article. An interesting motif, this could provide some interesting reading as a topic here on the NMB.

 

Ron STL

[Antti]

For what its worth, a tsuba that looks very similar to the first and third examples is listed in Nihonto Australia.

 

http://www.nihonto.com.au/html/tsu384_skull_tsuba.html

[Drago]

EDIT: Found it: http://www.nihonto.com.au/html/tsu371_skull_tsuba.html Awesome, isn't it?

 

There also is this, but if really looks strange: http://www.nihonto.com.au/html/tsu448_skull_tsuba.html

 

Anyway, what is that skull motive about? Is that something like the European Baroque "memento mori" or is this purely decorative?

[John A Stuart]

Memento mori is good and with impermanence, transience, the ultimate destiny what it means I think. John

[Alan Morton]

All,

You have to be quick they are very popular

like Mantis parifinalia

 

Alan.

[Baka Gaijin]

Morning all,

 

I'm told the skull or bones is not exactly the same as the aesthetic of Vanitas or Memento Mori in western art.

 

It may often be interpreted as a reference to the Matsuo Basho Haiku:

 

夏草や

兵どもが

夢の跡

 

Natsukusa ya

Tsuwamonodomo ga

Yume no ato

 

The summer grasses—

For many brave warriors

The aftermath of dreams.

 

(Professor Donald Keene's masterly translation)

 

(I have a recollection of a similar topic on NMB some time back.)

 

Cheers

[Drago]

夏草や

兵どもが

夢の跡

 

So this is what, some sort of mono no aware heroism thing?

[Ford Hallam]

This is one of my favourite versions of this motif. Shimizu Jingu IV, if memory serves.

 

And it's interesting that Malcolm cites the Basho haiku he does...I'm actually busy at the moment inlaying it on a tsuba, the other side bearing my own interpretation on the 'skull and bones' theme.

 

Very much still a work in progress.

[Gunome]

Hello,

 

Here photo of a tsuba with skull and bones, but not made in iron.

[Brian]

Ford,

That is going to be awesome. Is it spoken for already?

 

Brian

[Ford Hallam]

Thanks Brian, it's coming along nicely, as far as I'm concerned. It does actually have a waiting list, who knew the subject would be so popular?, of first refusals. I may have to do a couple more :D

[docliss]

May I please request from Sebastien some details re his lovely kinko tsuba, including an image of the reverse side? With many thanks,John L.

[george trotter]

I was told that skull, bones, lying in tall grasses under the moon was a direct reference to the ghosts and spirits that roam among the reedbeds on the battlefield of Musashino.

It is a recurring theme in Japanese art...even in movies such as Onibaba.

 

 

just my old memory bank arcing up...

[Baka Gaijin]

Good evening Tobias,

 

You asked:

 

"So this is what, some sort of mono no aware heroism thing?"

 

I don't think this has to do with either heroism or what we in the West commonly associate with the term "mono no aware".

 

It's way more subtle than that.

 

A little like trying to grasp smoke.

 

Maybe a way to get an inkling of this it is to relate it to Umami うまみ, umami is a kind of savoury taste, almost indefineable... yet when you taste it you know it, however it just defies classification and you cannot explain it to someone else.

 

A bit like Giri ぎり, obligation, debt, the burden hardest to bear, even god, or none of those, it's just Giri; Don't worry about it.

 

(Due homage to Takakura Ken and Sydney Pollack)

 

Cheers

[Gunome]

May I please request from Sebastien some details re his lovely kinko tsuba, including an image of the reverse side? With many thanks,John L.

Sure, here are the other side.

 

It was the n° 80 of the Lecuire collection's auction sale in Paris 2012.

The description give it to 18th century. H. 8,5 cm.

With reference: similary tsuba in Mène collection, Charpentier & Lair-Dubreuil sale, 1rst Sale 1913, n°421.

[Ford Hallam]

My reading of Basho's famous haiku is less romantic and speaks to his sober assessment that the vainglorious aspirations of hired fighters inevitably end in nothing, nothing but the grasses of an old battlefield....which wither and die come autumn. To me the haiku is quite sardonic.

[Baka Gaijin]

Good morning Ford,

 

Maybe the opening lines of Hojoki 方丈記 express something of the feeling also.

 

"Ceaselessly the river flows and yet the water is never the same, while in the still pools the shifting foam gathers and is gone, never staying for a moment.

Even so is man and his habitation.............

 

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Hojoki.html

 

Or the opening lines of Heike Monogatari 平家物語. (A.L. Sadler translation)

 

The sound of the bell of Gionshoja echoes the impermanence of all things.

The hue of the flowers of the teak tree declares that they who flourish must be brought low.

Yea, the proud ones are but for a moment, like an evening dream in springtime.

The mighty are destroyed at the last, they are but as the dust before the wind.

 

http://library.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/re ... -whole.pdf

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7udqvSObOo4

 

Cheers

[Ford Hallam]

Morning Malcolm

 

the sense of melancholy you pick up in in those references are typical, I think, of the general mood of much of Heian Period literature. And it's this sensibility that then subsequently runs through most of Japanese art. It's the awareness of life's impermanence and fleetingness.

 

I imagine Basho was well aware of the Heike Monogatari so those lines may well have inspired his haiku. Basho was following the journey to the North (1689) by Yoshitsune and Benkei and the haiku is supposed to have been written at Hiraizumi (present day Iwate-ken)

 

In the West a flower is regarded as most beautiful at full bloom whereas in Japan the moment it begins to wither holds more pathos and is held to be more emotional. It's tinged with sadness but this aspect heightens the aesthetic experience to elicit what is known as 'mono no aware'; the pathos of all things. I think one of the reasons this particular aesthetic awareness is felt so deeply in Japan is because it's at that moment where life cycles begin to decline that a glimpse of the mysterious nature of existence is presented to us. This is called 'yugen' in Japanese aesthetic terms and is regarded as the most profound potential of art, this pointing to the eternal mysteries of the universe.

 

Zen philosophy, on the other hand, tends to confront death head on and to shake us abruptly into an awareness of it's mundanity. A skull is the most natural thing in the world, it's existence is merely evidence of a life having been lived. And we know how Zen emphasises living in the moment, simply getting stuck in and living and dying without regret.

 

So, the skull theme can be read/experience in 2 fundamental ways and perhaps both at once. I would suggest. It would depend on the disposition of the viewer, I think.

[raiden]

[John A Stuart]

Great picture and no worries. It is fitting Some info with it would be good for learning. John

[Baka Gaijin]

Good morning Mike,

 

Thank you for the Tsuba shown, at first I didn't understand the context of term nozarashi.

 

野ざらし weather beaten

 

Is it this?

 

Matsuo Basho - Nozarashi Kiko 　野ざらし紀行

 

Nozarashi Kikō 　

Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton

 

Journal of the Bleached Bones

Account of Exposure to the Fields

Skeleton in the Fields

Records of the Weather-Exposed Skeleton

The Weatherbeaten Trip

 

貞亭元年 - 貞亭2年 - (1684 -1685)

Leaving Edo in August, returning the next year on April 10

Via the Tokaido to Nagoya, Iga, Yoshino, Kyoto, Otsu and back on the Nakasendo.

 

 

Cheers

[Henry Wilson]

Below are tsuba by Kaneie and Nobuie with the motif of skulls. They are from the Ikeda books and I have done a translation of any text. (Sorry about the bad pictures and the bad translation).

 

I wonderf if Kaneie was the first to use this motif?

 

 

野晒 図 Field Bleach Motif

生きとし生けるものの、すべての過去を流す,流した感じを受ける。何らの不潔さも不気味さをも感じをせない、静かに澄 んだ図である。鉄色、彫 、施 された金銀象嵌 など、何れも至って見事である。

同時代の信家に「切りむすぶ太刀の下こそ地獄 なれ、進めやー先は極 楽」と古歌を切り付 けた鍔と好一対 といえる。

 

This tsuba gives a sense of time passing of all living things. There is nothing unclean or weird about the motif, it is peacefully clear.

The beautiful iron, the carving and the applied gold and silver inlay are all extremely pleasant.

It is from the same period as this Nobuie, that has a well matched old poem carved on it

"To be cut under the long sword is hell, to advance forward is paradise"

 

生きて戦う時は信家のごとく、そして死んで後「焼けば灰、埋めは土となるものを、なにがのこりて罪となるらん」とも歌われているが、金家のこの鍔に 接すること痛切にこの歌が思い出されるのである。

Nobuie's tsuba gives a feeling to live through battle and then to die later, "To burn to ash, to become earth, what remains becomes guilt". Kaneie's tusba touches on this feeling.

一、信家古歌鍔　　1. Nobuie old poem tsuba

二、野晒 図拡大 2. Field bleach magnified image

三、後籐光乗作野晒図。 比較すると金家作に一段と枯れた感じがある。3. Goto Kojo Bleached Field work. Compared to Kaneie work, it is much more developed.

 

 

Below is a Nobuie with the similar theme. There are no notes with this picture.

[Baka Gaijin]

Good morning Henry

 

"To be cut under the long sword is hell, to advance forward is paradise"

 

I have a recollection somewhere of a Carpe Diem type Japanese saying which is anecdotally linked to something one of the founders of a famous Ryuha (Martial school) said like this regarding timing and distance and closing in rendering the use of the enemy's katana length sword useless.

 

Cheers

[kunitaro]

野晒しNozarashi　muneki

[Gunome]

a kozuka

 

[Ron STL]

Lots of very interesting examples coming in. Thanks! After back home again from the San Francisco show, I'll select some of these examples to include in my JSS/US article. Will clear this with the owners, NMB, etc., at that time. What this has shown me is what little I knew of the subject and its meanings. Hope I can pull this all together into a meaningful article. Meanwhile, continue to post examples if they are available. I will be kicking around the show all weekend. Ron STL

[Ed]

I have posted this before, and while not fittings it is the same theme seen on a silk scroll painting. When looking closely at the skull one notes the outline and the larger fissure lines are actually made up of kanji. Morita Sama was kind enough to examine it and determine that it is in fact a letter by master Rennyo, by Kyoshin, "Hakkotsu no Ofumi" (White Ashes). Hope it is not out of place.

[Baka Gaijin]

Thanks Ed

 

Amazing image

 

Here is a translation of Nozarashi Kikō 野ざらし紀行 by Matsuo Bashō 松尾 芭蕉

 

http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61100.pdf

 

Cheers

[kunitaro]

"Who was King" "Who was Beggar"

[Baka Gaijin]

Good morning Kunitaro san

 

Thank you for the example of a Memento Mori (Remember that you will die).

 

Vanitas raised it to quite a high art.

 

Here's the operative quote from Ecclesiates 1:2;12:8 "Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas" - Vanity of vanities; all is vanity (King James Vulgate version)

 

Here's some examples of the artist movement known as "Vanitas" by the Dutch Artist Pieter Claesz:

 

http://www.pubhist.com/person/159/pieter-claesz

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Claesz

 

The main elements of Vanitas would be a Skull, a lute or violin with a broken string, a candle with smoke twirling upwards from the wick as if the flame had just extinguished, a flower with fallen petal or a wine glass on its side as if its contents had spilled away.

 

Cheers