Ohayo Gozaimasu• Please have your Assignment #1 and Chart #1 out ready to

be stamped.

Facing your Literature Circle

• 15 minutes: review your assignments with one another. I would like each of you to share your findings and knowledge of your subject.

• Ensure your name and assignment # (1A, 1C, etc. ) are on it.

• Have your chart out

• Stay on task

Book Group Discussion

You should be able to answer questions about……..

• What are the four major Japanese festivals?

• How are we seeing loneliness in the novel? What is the cause of loneliness? Is there a cure?

• What do we mean by emotional landscape in the book? How does this relate to the physical landscape? (Hint: think about Sachi’s garden, Matsu’s garden, the storm, etc)

• What can you say about the author’s writing style?

What is the essence of something?

Look at this Ikebana

arrangement of flowers.

What do you notice? Can

you sketch the essence?

What is important about negative space?

Look at this garden….

How does this garden differ?

Which do you like better?

• Why?

“Nature does not happen; it is wrought (made).” From “The Essence of Japan” by Donald Richie

“The arrangement is not only in the branches, the leaves, the flowers. It is also in the spaces between.”

“Wood is carved with the grain so that the natural shape can assert itself. … the Japanese carpenter finds the shape within the tree. Or, within the rock, for stone too has grain, and this the mason finds,

chipping away to reveal the form beneath.”

“There are no opposites…the opposites are one.”

“As the single finger bends the branch, so the social hand inclines the individual. If the unkempt tree is not considered natural, then the unkempt

life is equally out of bounds.”

How can we apply the concept of negative space to our novel?

• What is not being said?

• What is not being revealed, portrayed, understood.

Japanese Poetry

• Suggestion

• Symbols

• Simplicity

• (Goal, means, result)

• Imagination

Haiku

On a withered branch

A crow has settled –

autumn nightfall.

- Matsuo Basho

Even stones in streams

of mountain water compose

songs to wild cherries.

- Uejima Onitsura

On top of skeletons

they put a gala dress, and then –

the flower-viewing!

- Uejima Onitsura (1660-1738)

Tanka

• “short songs”

• 5 lines

• 31 syllables

• 5-7-5-7-7

This perfectly still

spring day bathed in the soft light

from the spread-out sky.

Why do the cherry blossoms

So restlessly scatter down?

- Ki no Tomonori

The clustering clouds –

Can it be they wipe away

The lunar shadows?

Every time they clear a bit

The moonlight shines brighter.

- Minamoto no Toshiyori

When I went to visit

The girl I love so much,

That winter night

The river blew so cold

That the plovers were crying.

- Ki Tsurayuki

Tanka Games!!!

Classmate poemsThink about the essence of this person.

I welcome you writing even more than one.

Write it in tanka form. It’s even cooler if it connects with nature

Needs to be in my hands by next week Thursday.

Decorate these beautifully.

Homework

• Read to page 113

• Book Group Project #3 is due the second class period after break- get started? UP to you!

Sleep, rest, nap, meditate, chill out, do nothing, zone out, be zen, sleep late, snooze in, eat.