In Culture
Fuji Musumè (藤娘) or Wisteria Maiden is an Otsu-e (Japanese folk painting in Ōtsu, Shiga) subject thought to have been inspired by popular dances. These painting were often sold as good-luck charms for marriages. Fuji Musumè is also a famous classical Kabuki dance.
In Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Bean Trees, Turtle refers to wisteria vines as bean trees, because the pre-bloomed flower pods are shaped like beans. Later, she and Taylor learn that wisteria is a legume (i.e., is in the bean family) and that wisteria and other legumes engage in symbiotic relationships, just as the book's characters do.
Read more about this topic: Wisteria
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)