Daiji (Epigraph)

This is the first set in my tenki-shi series. As the epigraph, it forms the phrase tenki-shi, which is Japanese for 'weather poem.'

In this poetry form, English language forms the individual pen strokes which are used to write Japanese kanji. Together these strokes form a single character, defined and described by the English within. Multiple characters placed together in a set form a whole phrase or theme.

One of my goals was to make Japanese readable to people who can't read Japanese, by packing meaning into the visual character. But stuff gets jumbled in the process of language. Every stroke of kanji is made in a certain direction, so for anyone who doesn't know the correct direction, part of the puzzle is sorting out the direction that the English takes and where one word starts and another ends.

I did several of these for my 2011 chapbook 一万個の言葉 (10 000 Words), and I will probably never do any more because they're an incredible pain in the ass