nobori bata cloth, Japan, Showa (c.1950), cm 724x72. a textile banner used for celebrating Boys' Festival, a Japanese festivity occurring early May every year. This is a post-WWII textile decorated in tsutsugaki technique on machine-loomed cotton. It is a rather interesting item though, as it is part one of a pair that has survived the years and that we are actually posting on rr, and shows how such banners were often paired to invoke blessings for the boys approaching adult life. It depicts a dragon, and we must consider that the eastern dragon is not the gruesome monster of western mediaeval memory, but the genius of strength and goodness. He is the spirit of change, therefore of life itself. Hidden in the caverns of inaccessible mountains, or coiled in the unfathomed depths of the sea, he awaits the time when he slowly arouses himself into activity. He unfolds himself in the storm-clouds; he washes his mane in the blackness of the seething whirlpools. His claws are in the fork of the lightning, his scales begin to glisten in the bark of rain-swept pine-trees. His voice is heard in the hurricane, which, scattering the withered leaves of the forest, quickens a new spring... the dragon reveals himself only to vanish…