Photo: Giuliano Francesconi - Arcugnano (Vicenza)
Tanabata
Year:
2004
Materials:
leather and colored buttons
Size:
120 x 150 cm
TANABATA
In Japan, on the seventh day of the seven lunation, is celebrated the Tanabata Day, which refers to an old Chinese legend. It is told that in ancient times, on the bank of a small stream, a beautiful girl lived passing her days spinning, she was the niece of the Mother of the Goddesses.
One day, crossing the stream, she saw Hikoboshi, a young shepherd who lived on the opposite bank and fell in love with him. The Shepherd and the Weaver married and had two children but the Mother of the Goddesses discovered the escape of the girl and ordered her to leave her husband and her children at once and to go back to the bank. Not only to make their separation definitive she threw the stream on the starry sky, but the young Weaver with it as well.
But, moved by the tears of the Shepherd and his children, she allowed the two lovers to meet once in a year, on the night of the seventh day of the seven lunation, when a flight of magpies forms a bridge over the blue river with the wings, today known as the Milky Way. Hikoboshi and Tanabata, that is Altari and Vega, can meet at last.
In Japan, magpies are mainly concentrated in the Kyushu region.
KAWABATA YASUNARI
“Tenohira no sh?setsu”
