Waku🧠 × Iki💓 = The Aesthetics of Living🎨 [Part 2]
─Creative Awards 2025 (Essay Category) Entry─ (Posted 7/7)
Prologue
Part 1 explored the relationship between "Waku (Frame) and Iki (Chic)" and "Shuhari (Follow, Break, Transcend)."
In this second part, I would like to focus on and delve deeper into "Waku and Iki"☺️
An Anatomy of Waku and Iki
🌱 Evolution from the 'Tree' radical to the 'Rice' radical: From the 'Sprouting' of creation to 'Fruition'
Tree radical → Rice radical change, not just as a difference in radicals, but
I have captured it by superimposing it with 'plant growth'──
☯️ Contrast and Resonance of Meaning: Waku × Iki is truly a 'two-in-one pair of opposites'
Because there is a form, breaking the form becomes chic (iki).
Because there are limitations, beauty seeps through.
👉 In other words, to become 'chic,' you first need a 'frame'.
──Truly the 'two-in-one pair of opposites ☯️' that I advocate.
🫧 BLUE Interpretation: These two characters are a dance of stillness and motion, form and freedom 🕺💃
Because there is a 'frame,' 'chic' shines.
To be 'chic,' one must know the 'frame.'
These two kanji are a famous duo in the kanji world where 'closeness in form' and 'contrast in meaning' beautifully overlap ☯️
In my worldview, when they fuse like 'Concept (Frame) × Sensibility (Chic)', it truly becomes my set of values ☺️
'Evolution of words' (Evolution from 🌱 Tree radical → 🌾 Rice radical) when replaced with
"metaphor for life" (from 'sprouting' of creation to 'harvest'),
a formula like this is born 🐣
👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
Waku🧠 × Iki💓 = The Aesthetics of Living🎨
──Frame and Chic
What is creative activity──
The tree (thought) sprouts,
The rice (emotion) ripens,
A process that binds 'life' called a single work
🌱 Creation is the act of weaving 'life' from 'tree' and 'rice'
Creative activity is a life process born within a dual natural cycle, where the 'tree' of thought sprouts from the soil, and the 'rice' of emotion ripens with each season ☺️
Thought takes root, extends its trunk, spreads its branches, and gives 'form.'
This corresponds to the composition, structure, and the skeleton of the story.
On the other hand, emotion, like wind, water, and sunlight, nurtures that tree, filling it with the 'warmth' and 'moisture' that dwell within. Each grain of rice is the joy, sadness, anger, and prayer poured into the creation. It is the harvest that springs from within a person.
Eventually, when the rice of emotion bears fruit on the tree of thought, it emerges into the world as a single living entity called a “work of art”.
It is born from my inner universe and connects to a new life that sprouts in someone else's heart──.
This “Tree×Rice＝Life” cycle of creation connects people to people, and even nurtures invisible time and memories☺️
That is also connected to “knowing the frame, while playing with style”
🪞Afterword (Summary Poem)
On the tree of thought, grains of emotion bear fruit, and style blooms within the frame.
【End】
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