Akira Okazaki and Liza with finished scroll

Fiddler Crab

This was one of the projects I took to Kyoto to work on at the Okazaki Seikōdō Studio. The artwork of the shrimp in the boat is not a painting, but rather printed silk from the lining of a man’s haori jacket. Yoko Nishina did the calligraphy in a silver-white blend of sumi. The haiku is by Yumiko Katayama, one of Japan’s pre-eminent haiku poets.

招かざる波にさらはれ望潮  manekazaru nami ni saraware shiomaneki

Swept away by an unbidden wave, the tide-beckoning crab

(We call this crab, with its one oversize claw a “fiddler crab”, but in Japanese it is a shiomaneki—”tide beckoner” crab.

I brought the patterned charmeuse silk, which I had already put a backing on, and Mr. Okazaki suggested the modern design with a narrow pink edging around the art, and narrow lines suggesting “wind strips” at the top.