Japanese Culture: Identity and Tradition

Nature

The jet-black night
Deepens to a hush among the birches
In the stream's pure bed,
Where the plovers raise their call
Above the murmur of the stream.

Nature tinged with Shintoism is what lends beauty and purity to man's palaces and his life.

Even in Nara
The capital that has become
Our abandoned home,
The cherry trees have blossomed out,
Unchanged in color from the past.