Plant Journeys blog post #9 – Bamboo: a symbol of integrity

Bamboo has several symbolic associations: its unbending nature refers to integrity, but at the same time it can relate to youth and suppleness; its ability to survive adverse weather makes it an emblem of endurance; and, since its stem is hollow, it is linked with humility and purity of the heart. Both in China and Japan, bamboo appears in combination with other plants in visual imagery, creating diverse symbolic associations. In addition to The Three Friends of Winter (bamboo, plum and pine), bamboo can be found together with rocks, emphasising the virtuous qualities of a scholar and gentleman, and with orchids, plums and chrysanthemum, the composition is a reference to the four seasons. This last combination has been called the Four Gentlemen or Four Plants of Virtue.

Scholar painters (also called literati painters in English literature) in China favoured bamboo and plum as the subject matter for monochrome painting, using just black ink. Particularly with bamboo painting, there were many affinities in brushwork techniques with calligraphy, the favoured expression of the scholar painters. They also appreciated objects made from bamboo for scholars’ desks, such as brush holders and wrist rests.

Poets have found inspiration in the various stages of bamboo’s growth and appearance in different seasons. The wind blows through a bamboo thicket or bamboo cast their shadows in moonlight as they are accompanying moon-viewing in the following haiku by Matsuo Bashō (1644–94):

‘having slept in the rain,
the bamboo returns upright:
moon viewing’

[David Landis Barnhill, trans., Bashō’s Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005, p. 25]

Another somewhat later poem from an anthology Mutama River (Mutomagawa) of 1750 contains a haiku by an unknown poet, which plays with a similar theme although in a different season and time of the day:

‘sleeping in the snow
the bamboo is shaken awake
by the morning sun’

[Stephen Addiss, The Art of Haiku: Its History through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters, Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 2012, p. 164]

Dr Törmä’s research can be explored further in a new exhibition – Plant Journeys: Stories of East Asian Plants in Hornel’s Home and Garden – which runs until 31 October at Broughton House, Kirkcudbright.