Ine no mandara

Tsukubai in the Japanese garden in Hammersmith Park.

The object itself is called a tsukubai and is a stone wash basin often placed in Japanese gardens. The four characters around the edge appear to be (reading clockwise from the top) 五 (JP: go; “five”), 佳 (JP: kei; “excellent/beautiful”), 止 (JP: shi; “stop”), and 矢 (JP: ya; “arrow”).

Closer inspection reveals that the final two strokes of 止 are angled, which would be unusual for this character in this style. However, it would not be unusual if the square 口 (JP: kuchi; “mouth”) in the centre of the basin were joined to the top of 止 to form the character 足 (JP: taru; “suffice”).

In fact, the other three characters can each be joined to 口 to form characters with different meanings: 五 with 口 underneath is 吾 (JP: ware; “I”), 佳 with 口 on the left is 唯 (JP: tada; “only, just”), and 矢 with 口 on the right is 知 (JP: shiru; “know”). Together, the four characters make the phrase 吾唯足知 (JP: ware tada taru wo shiru; “I am content with what I am/have”).

Not long afterwards, I was planning to write 穏和 (JP: onwa; “gentle, mild”) for some friends of mine, and I remembered that there was an old form of the character 和 that I could use: 龢. In this form, 禾 (JP: nogi hen; “grain stalk radical”) is on the right-hand side of the character. 穏 has 禾 on its left-hand side.

The 秀 (JP: shū; “excellence”) of my own penname has 禾 on the top. I wondered if there was a character with 禾 on the bottom so that I could make my own version of 吾唯足知 using 禾 as the shared radical (rather than 口).

There appear to be only two such characters. Fortunately, one of them, 稟 (JP: rin; “accept the gift of life”), forms a natural compound with 秀: 稟秀 (JP: rinshū; “natural beauty”).

I had succeeded in making my own kanji mandala from the compounds 稟秀 and 龢穏 (read top-to-bottom and right-to-left rather than in a clockwise circle) centered on the radical 禾, which represents a fruitful rice stalk bending under the weight of its grain.

I jotted down some notes (see below) and sent them to Ryūha. I thought it might look good in clerical script or Zhou-dynasty seal script, but I left the choice up to him. You can see what he came up with at the top of this page.

My notes on Ine no mandara.

I was delighted with the piece. There are elements of Nishikawa Yasushi’s and Ushikubo Gojū’s styles, as well as Ryūha’s own unmistakable, confident touches. Truly wonderful!