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Nantembo's Darumas
I don't think anyone ever went so far with images of the man who brought Zen to SE Asia in the 6th Century.
One offers a strike with a very large brush that was violent enough not just to splatter,
but to tear the paper, just to define the line of his robe - then a laughably glum expression
with a missing nose, and the kind of face that makes you check that it's not some trick that
works just as well upside down or somesuch. Another is his invention, riffing on the alleged
atrophied legs, the snow Daruma. The others are ippitsu, one-stroke, Darumas, where he has his
back to us, facing the wall in meditation. Clients would claim that these paintings looked like
owls or octopi rather than the revered godfather of their religion, and Nantembo would say
"Interesting. These people talk as if they have seen Daruma..." which made me laugh, but frankly
these paintings do look more like octopi (better still, jellyfish) than anything human.
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