Welcome New Member of Crescent Company!

[karadin.livejournal.com]

Welcome! Please report to the Rankings_Member Dossiers in tags to give a small bio of yourself and meet fellow soldiers with common interests.

ann456 

If you would like a birthday card, please leave your name and date in ga birthdays master list.

Feel free to hit scans, contests, our ongoing Inspiration of Japan Summer Craft Challenge, our Ganbatte Nihon Goods to aid disaster survivors in Japan, along with our fan art and various tags to see what you've been missing.

Thanks to the Membership Section, for your hard work!

Gackt Army International Fanclub General Staff

INSPIRATION of JAPAN CHALLENGE - Ikebana - Flower Arrangement

[karadin.livejournal.com]

Suggested by Col.wongkk Ikebana is a Japanese style of flower arrangement. More than simply putting flowers in a container, ikebana is a disciplined art form in which nature and humanity are brought together, Ikebana emphasizes other areas of the plant rather than blooms, such as stems and leaves, drawing emphasis toward shape, line, form.

Another aspect present in ikebana is its employment of minimalism. The structure of a Japanese flower arrangement is based on a scalene triangle delineated by three main points, usually twigs, considered in some schools to symbolize heaven, earth, and man and in others sun, moon, and earth.
(wiki)

Word and image: death poem 1 - Episode 0

[wongkk.livejournal.com]

A few days ago, bugackt made some beautiful screencaps from the Episode 0 MV.  These reminded me very strongly of some of the imagery in classic Japanese death poems. 

Death poems?  Since about 1200, you couldn't claim literary credibiity as a teacher or poet if you didn't hand down a decent death poem as your days drew to a close. Consequently, some great figures wrote their "death" poem years in advance! 

Other people were pestered by their disciples for a death poem even as they battled with a last illness; a few strong and perverse characters made a point of refusing to write one, entirely to demonstrate that they were still in control, death or no!

The original poems - nearly always short (tanka, haiku) - depend heavily on understanding iconic allusions, which are really only of currency in Japan and in the Buddhist tradition (though they are perfectly explicable).  One of the best collections of Japanese death poetry contains very detailed and revealing explanations (from the translator) of the significance of the images chosen, but, as explanations inevitably obstruct the poetry, I've preferred to make paraphrases of these poems which exhibit the meaning of the poem in reframed, more universal terms.  I hope!

Here's the first one, using a screenshot from Episode 0: