The Power of Snow

The Japanese haiku poet Yamaguchi Ranko created this deceptively modest poem slip (tanzaku). Executed in monochrome ink, it features one of Yamaguchi’s poems and the related image of the Zen Buddhist patriarch Daruma seen as a snowman. The accompanying poem reads: "As it rolls, it grows! The power of snow." Yamaguchi produced a number of haiku-inspired paintings, called in Japanese haiga, which are true expressions of the scholarly ideal of the so-called Three Perfections in their combination of poetry, painting, and calligraphy.

Although the work appears charmingly artless, it playfully unravels to reveal a profound message—which it then undercuts. The "power of snow" mentioned in the poem lies in its ability to make the snowman grow in size. The poem alludes to a popular saying of perseverance: "If Daruma falls seven times, he will get up the eighth time." A "snow Daruma" will only become big by falling and rolling in snow, and likewise, human beings can only become great through failure, through the act of falling down. But, in the image, rather than rolling or falling in snow, Daruma approaches through a pattern of sandal tracks in the snow.