Kanji – KusaMura

What is in a name? Well, a great deal is in a name. The characters being incorporated into our logo stand for kusa mura. The word Kusamura combines two units to come up with the meaning. Interesting enough, defining the two words and investigating alternatives of a single printed character have been an investigation into entomology and linguistics. As in our language, no word has a single meaning. And just as English, it has been morphing throughout time and history depending on the needs of an era. Having the privilege of knowing several languages helps us understand these nuances and helps in the investigation of meaning.

The name Kusamura was attached to our club in the late 1950’s from our founding masters and students. Their original meaning and why they chose that name is not currently available to us, but in looking into the language we can begin to see the rationale, especially considering the legacy of our founders. What does this mean? Let me take you through some of the investigation that has resulted in 7 pages of documentation and historical usage so far. Some of the key phrases will be in bold and italic.

Kusa: 

1. A structure in the form of a network often used in medical terminology

2. A dense growth of small trees or shrubs and in the English usage of “thicket”

3. Chinese root meaning clump, thicket or bush but also a “group of people or things”

4. Origin of the word is “intelligent”

5. Grass/weeds or Irregular group of grass or bushes per the Pocket Japanese Dictionary

6. Weeds, herbs, grass radical, grassy field

Mura:

1. Town, village

2. flock, group, crowd, herd, cluster

3. faction or clique, rural community, rustic,

4. group, multitude

 Kusamura: Combined character

1.  A series – a thicket of cedar trees

2.  A general term for plants

3. A cluster of plants

4. Tree

5. Name of a group

An excerpt from martial arts:  “Blade of Grass” by Joe Maurantonio, BNYD

“In ancient times one of the names of the ninja was kusa. This alias, much like shinobi, was used to describe mysterious operatives from a certain Japanese clans.  The kanji pictograph for kusa means grass' and is derived from the clan members that strategically used hiding in fields and woodlands to become invisible to their enemy.

 “The first insight is that grass is abundant. Grass can grow most anywhere it has space. Blending with the grass gives us the notion that our training must be abundant and take place wherever grass grows.”

“Our second insight is that although each blade of grass looks the same they are all unique. Different in size, texture and color they still blend together to form a collective body in our gardens and fields.”

With all that being said we extrapolate our meaning as a group of people in our time and with relationship to what we do as a group. We are a “Group of People” who works with trees that may be shown in the form of a “Clump, Group, Grove or Thicket”. We as a group work on subject matter that may all “look the same but are each unique”. We work on our trees individually but also as a community, a community that is small and tightly knit clustered around our hobby; to create living art. We create our living art using the design styles created in Japan by executing an “irregular” triangle of form wherein total balance is not what is desired, rather to create the irregular or isosceles triangle in form of the group of trees or the single unit.

I have a challenge for the members of our club. Let’s see who can extract from these words a motto that relates to these kanji characters which we can use in print. What will it be?

Kusamura - Kanji	Third Choice
First Choice	Second Choice

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