What does this Japanese language scroll say?
March 13, 2011 3:40 PM   Subscribe

What does this scroll say? Outside of scroll. First section. Second section. It is written in Japanese, and I suspect it has something to do with Ikebana (flower arranging).

Phyllis Blackburn is my grandmother. This scroll belonged to her. (She did Ikebana, which is why I suspect the scroll refers to that.)

These photos are not the entire scroll; I ran out of time to take photos of the whole thing before my flight back to New York from Alabama, and will try to get my mom to take photos of the rest of it.
posted by ocherdraco to Writing & Language (4 answers total)
 
First photo just says "scroll."

Second photo is illegible to my Japanese wife who has worked at that same Ikebana school. It's signed by Ikenobo, the name of the school/style, and dated 1989. (Japanese calligraphy is essentially intended to be illegible. The better the practitioner, the less anybody else has a chance of reading it.)

It is some kind of certificate of attaining a given rank.

If you want I'll try to decipher the third photo more later.
posted by zachawry at 3:57 PM on March 13, 2011


Response by poster: That's great! I think there are printed characters next to the calligraphy—they didn't come out well in my cell phone photo. I'll try to get a clearer photo from my mother.

And I'd love it if you took a stab at the third photo.
posted by ocherdraco at 4:03 PM on March 13, 2011


I have beginner skill at Japanese. I'm working on the third scroll with a dictionary, but if it's possible, can you upload a higher resolution image of the second scroll? You'll notice that a more legible version of the writing is stamped to the right as a reading aid.
posted by Senza Volto at 8:07 PM on March 13, 2011


Sorry, I give up on the third scroll. ;( The first character (right-top) is "Left", it may also mean "The Following..." in the context of a scroll. (For eg. The following document is a proof of... etc.)

The first two characters in the second line mean "Generation", or lifetime.
posted by Senza Volto at 9:09 PM on March 13, 2011


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