nobori bata cloth, Japan, Meiji (c.1880), cm 350x32. a textile banner used for celebrating Boys' Festival, a Japanese festivity occurring early May every year. With a typical 19th century narrow size, it displaying a paulownias family crest in the upper part, and a scenery of an iris plant, a rock and a little stream down to the bottom. We already posted a banner with apparently quite a similar design. Apparently… in the same way was the former displaying a quiet and relaxing ‘zen garden’ look, so owns this one a sort of ‘explosive hidden energy’ within… very much to spot in the rippling stream flow-lines and in the graphic look of the central rock, that looks as if it had been just punched by a comics-superhero. Decorated in tsutsugaki technique on hand-spun and hand-woven cotton, the banner shows bit of colour running, possibly due to age-washing, that has made the cotton cloth a little stiff. a great Japanese thing though.