Cultural References
In Equinox Flower (彼岸花, Higanbana), a 1958 color Japanese film directed by Yasujirō Ozu, one of the characters declaims a poet "based on a death poem of patriot Kusunoki Masatsura". Whether it has to do with the precious poem is unknown.
An approximate translation is :
- My father's precepts are engraved in my heart.
- I will faithfully follow the emperor's edict.
- 10 years of patience, and finally the time has come.
- Strike a powerful blow
- for the emperor's cause we are struggling now.
- To fight and die as men, we make an oath.
- We, 143 companions of war, united as one,
- determined to fight until victory, yes, we are.
- By dying, heroes earn an immortal glory,
- the cowards suffer an eternal shame.
- With the edges of our arrows, we engrave our story,
- the blades of our swords shine in the evening.
- Against the approaching enemy, let's walk with the same step,
- At their general, let's give the final blow.
Read more about this topic: Kusunoki Masatsura
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)