Japanese Doll Festival

Every year on March 3 in Japan a festival takes place called Hinamatsuri. This festival has many names including the doll festival and Girl’s Day. During this festival large tiered red platforms are created to display Japanese dolls. These dolls are referred to as hina-ningyo and are traditional ornamental dolls dressed in traditional clothing. Typically these dolls are created to represent the Emperor, the Empress, and their attendants and musicians. The placement of these dolls is often strictly adhered to.
The placement of the Japanese dolls is as follows: The top tier holds the Emperor and the Empress. The second tier holds three court ladies. The third tier is reserved for five musicians and the fourth tier contains two ministers. The bottom tier holds three servants. It is also typical for representations of household items such as small furniture and meals to be placed beside the Japanese dolls.
The festival actually draws its roots from the period in which it was tradition for Japanese dolls to be set afloat. This tradition was known as hina-nagashi and it entailed created straw hina dolls, putting them in boats and setting them afloat down the river and to the sea. This was supposed to carry away troubles and bad spirits. The practice of sending them down rivers has come out of practice as fishermen were often catching the dolls in their nets. Now the dolls are sent out to sea. Once the spectators have left the boats are collected and then brought back to the temple to be burned.
Today this day is meant as a way for families to wish their daughters happiness and a successful life. It is traditional for Japanese dolls to be displayed in the home along with peach blossoms and traditional sweet sake called amazake is served. This sake is non-alcoholic and made from fermented rice. There are also traditional forms of sushi and crackers that are meant to be eaten on this day.
There are even songs sung during the festival, one of which is Ureshii Hinamatsuri or Happy Hinamatsuri and the lyrics when translated to English are as follows:

Let's light the lanterns
Let's set peach flowers
Five court musicians are playing flutes and drums
Today is a joyful Dolls' Festival!

Masamune Date Word

"Stick too much to Justice, you become inflexible.
Too much compassion, you get weaker."

"Jin-仁" Love and compassion

Someone can take over the country without Jin, but No one can become the ruler of the kingdom without Jin.

This is a word of Mencius.

So, Samurai must have Jin to rule people.
This is Samurai's duty to have Jin, otherwise, society can not be reserved many years cause if people don't feel their favor, another ruler should stand.

Samurai imposed themselves on having Jin as ruler.

This is so true in anywhere. If you become a manager, we try to have Jin.
Otherwise we never win the hearts and minds of the people.

"Yuu-勇" bravery

My favorite word - 義を見てせざるは勇なきなり
Translation is like
You are not brave if you don't do right thing, facing the necessity of right thing.
Sometimes people can not take right actions due to her/his circumstances.
However, they themselves know they are cowards.

So, Samurai was trained to overcome this cowardice because cowardice ends up losing the phlegm in an extreme situation.

It is the Samurai to control their fear in any circumstances and judge their actions in a calm manner.Genuine bravery can do this calm manner in really really extreme situations.

Interesting enough Samurai was trained not to be confused in any situations.

Totally different world from peaceful everyday.

"Gi"

"Gi-義" is the most important virtue.

Simple explanation is "Do the right thing as human beings".

For Samurai, "Gi" is a kind of self-rule to judge their action.

If death is the right thing, Samurai dies.
If you have to fight against justice, Samurai never escapes and fights even they know they die.

Filthy behavior, foul actions,, these are totally against "Gi" way.

Looking at myself, it is sometimes quite difficult to fight back against evil just because we want to secure our daily lives.. Poor weak mind.

Be SAMURAI! Boy.

Bushido the way of the Samurai by Inazo Nitobe

Greetings from Artcraft Japan

As our start, writing about "Bushido - the way of the Samurai" written by Inazo Nitobe is very meaninful to discuss the essence of Samurai spirit.

For foreigner (from the Japanese point of view), the fact Samurai kills himself must be really hard to understand.

However, if you can overcome the extreme fear - death, and more than than, if you can control your own life closure by yourself,,, how you want to live your life?

So, Bushido is all about "how to live".

you wan to die with grace and dignity.

In order to die with dignity, you must live with high level of discipline and polish Samurai virtue.

Samurai spirit still lives in Japanese Culture and Consciousness.

Too serious???

Samurai Grace

This blog is about Samurai and Japanese Culture.
Samurai Culture is the main roots of current Japanese culture backbone.