[Greg, he ask on the Fûrinkazan no hata]:
This was the war-banner of the 16th century samurai warlord, Takeda Shingen. In popular art, it's famously depicted in Kurosawa's KAGEMUSHA (1980). Shingen identified himself with the ideographs, which referenced a passage in the seventh chapter of Sun Tzu's THE ART OF WAR: swift as the wind, still as the forest, fierce as the fire, immovable as the mountain. In KAGEMUSHA, four of Shingen's famous Twenty-Four Generals were--for aesthetic reasons--each associated with one of the elements, if I recall (I always did like Yamagata Masakage...).
[I'm no sinologue, but the phraseology with regard to the banner
naturally tends to be invigorating and poetic. My copy of Sun Tzu in
translation gives the more workmanlike: "Thus, advancing at pace,
such an army is like the wind; slow and majestic, it is like the
forest; invading and plundering, it is like the fire; sedentary, it
is like a mountain," for the source text.
Actually, Sun Tzu lists six similes; the last two are "unpredicatable, it is like a shadow; moving, it is like lightning and thunder." I quite like those. Brings to mind a certain Johnny who had six rather prominent elemental associations himself...]
Stew.
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