fireflower 花火 (asakusa, japan)

Posted by timothy sullivan (Tokyo, Japan) on 29 July 2008 in Art & Design and Portfolio.

the japanese have a very cool way of seeing the world, as evidenced by their language. while modern japanese tends to deviate from this path, opting instead to absorb western words, traditional kanji characters really do express things so elegantly.

for example, anglophones would probably look at this photo and say, wow, fireworks. dissecting the word "fire work" sounds like we we were trying to express, "pretty things that go boom and make a lot of fire."

in japanese, however, consider: 花 (character for flower) + 火 (character for fire) = 花火, "hanabi" or "fireflower". which, to me, is a much more vivid way of saying what the fire looks like, instead of what it does.

intriguing, ne?

vfxy Photoblogs | Cool Photoblogs | Listed on Photoblogs.org