Semaphore Lakes

Sarah and I ascended Railroad Pass in the Subaru along a decent forest services road north west of Pemberton on the Thanksgiving weekend. Dan and Lesley with Ingrid and her dog Kaysa led the way in their Impreza. We parked at the wrong trailhead, bush-bashed to the real trail, and hiked a couple of hours up to the Semaphore Lakes at 1600 metres, where we set up camp beside one of the lower lakes.

Locomotive Mountain in the background, our trusty Hubba Hubba in the fore.

We ate dinner by the lake as the sun set behind the ridge and ice began to form on the surface of the lake. Temperatures plummeted and we lit a fire in the existing fire ring and drank Dan's scotch. Sarah and I were using our new sleeping bags for the first time, a pair of MEC Hybrid -20 degrees C, and they were vital. The temperature must have been somewhere between -7 and -10, especially with the nasty wind that whipped up in the night. We listened to the gentle crush of grinding ice as the wind urged it around the lake's surface. Next morning the lake was near frozen over. Kaysa's barks alerted us to the arrival of Christian and Michelle, who hiked in for breakfast, then departed due to Michelle's cold and the chill of the altitude.

Breakfast by lower Semaphore lake: Christian, Dan, Lesley, Matt & Michelle. Locomotive is to the left, Train Glacier in the centre and Face Mountain on the right.

We geared up and began an ascent of Locomotive Mountain. The region's landmarks bear the names of a railroad theme. The Railroad Group includes Locomotive, Tender and Caboose Mountains. Handcar Peak and Train Glacier are two other distinctive features. And then there's Semaphore: the mechanical railway signal system used for sending messages to train drivers.

Ingrid, Lesley & Dan, Face Mountain in the background.

We threaded our way through a handful of Semaphore's lakes, before scrambling up rocky scree to a bowl beneath the peak of Locomotive. I spotted a pika coming down the mountain with a twig of green leaves in its mouth. The pika took cover when it spotted me, and Kaysa probably gave it heart palpitations when she investigated.

Lesley, before the scramble.

We had lunch by a large rock - Dan's garlicky bean dip and Sarah's chanterelle mushroom pate proving to be winners - and continued our ascent to the ridge. From the ridge we had excellent views of Pemberton Meadows and the Lillooet River. We continued along the ridge towards Locomotive's peak, but concerns about time and daylight hours halted our group before the summit. I continued up alone, passing by berry-coloured bear scat not thirty metres from the summit of the mountain. From the top - 2340 metres - I had great views looking down at our tents by the lower Semaphore lake, and across at Train Glacier and Face Mountain.

Looking down the valley toward Pemberton.

Looking down at Semaphore Lakes from Locomotive; our campsite is by the lake at the top left.

Train Glacier from Locomotive, Face to the right.

We descended as the sun sank. The temperatures dropped again, but no wind rose to chill our bones. Ingrid made pumpkin pie and we gave thanks for the superb location. When we woke the next morning, the lake's surface of ice was solid enough to stand on. A grayish owl flew from snag to snag, pestered by another bird, as we hiked out to the road - we glassed it but the distance was too great to make a solid identification. We travelled down to the valley, searched for the Keyhole hot springs without any success, and then dispersed.

Ingrid and canine explorer Kaysa.

Desolation Sound

Marcus cutting across Desolation Sound; Cortes and Kinghorn islands over his bow; Vancouver Island mountains on the far horizon.

The seasons swing. Summer is over, despite the clear blue skies out my window, and autumn - fall - is upon us. Sarah and I, along with a small band of New Zealanders (Marcus, James and Karen), were on the water the last official day of summer. We were kayaking in Desolation Sound, on BC's Sunshine Coast. The sound was charted by both Spanish and English expeditions in 1792 and named by the captain of the English ship, George Vancouver, who noted "there was not a single prospect that was pleasing to the eye." I have to disagree with the man. We had gorgeous kayaking weather: clear sunny skies, glassy waters and little wind. The landscape was beautiful and dramatic. The sound's waters mirrored the line of jagged mountain tops that form the Coast Mountain range on our horizon; the forest-covered humps and rises of the islands of the strait, Cortes, Kinghorn, Mink, East and West Redondas; the arbutus bursting from the rocky cliffs and bluffs of the shorelines we followed.

Marcus and Mink Island.

We put in at Okeover Inlet on a Monday morning, after Sarah and Cuzza had made the run to Lund for eggers and the all important TP. Sarah and I were in a double sea kayak, a Seaward Passat G3, along with James and Karen. Marcus cruised in a Seaward Ascente. (Seaward is a Vancouver Island-based kayak company.) We traced our way through Okeover and Malaspina inlets, coming across a posse of seals sunning on rocks, before gliding into the "Aquarium", a shallow channel containing anemones, urchins, sea cucumbers and a multitude of starfish.

Seals of Malaspina Inlet.

After a lunch that featured freshly plucked and shucked oysters, we left the inlet and entered Desolation Sound. There was a sail in the distance, but barely a breath of wind. We followed the coastline, then crossed the sound to the shores of Mink Island. We kept to the edge of Mink, passing by a beautiful piece of property with a wood-fired hot tub sitting snugly in the rocky cleft of the shoreline. A small fishing vessel overtook us as we approached the Curme Islands, a tiny cluster of treed rocks off the eastern edge of Mink Island.

Curme Islands in the foreground; the hump of East Redonda and the Coast Mountains in the background.

Aerial view of the Curmes at low tide, with Mink Island at the top of the photograph.

The tide was low, but led by Marcus, we negotiated our way through the oyster-laden channels between the islands and beached our kayaks on the island closest to Mink. A couple from Washington State were camping on the island, basing themselves on the Curmes and exploring the region. The man exclaimed over our G3s. We unloaded and set up camp, finding flattish spaces to pitch tents amongst the trees of the island.

The Curmes are a cluster of three main islands, divided by a T-shaped channel, and a scattering of smaller islands and rocky outcrops. The island we camped on was lightly covered in arbutus, fir and pine. There was a long-drop and a no fires sign. We swam in water that was cold, but not frigid. Crabs scurried away from us. A lone driftwood log floated by. After dinner we lit a fire and drank fireball whisky. The stars were a million bright pinpricks in the clear night sky. We Antipodeans struggled with the northern constellations.


We rose to oatmeal and coffee, a quick fresh dip in the ocean, and broke camp. We made the return journey after circling through the Curme channels, following Mink's shore, across the sound and back into the inlets.

Cutting through the Curme channels.

We hit the ebb tide kayaking up Malaspina Inlet and stopped for lunch on a small island bordering the Aquarium channel. We watched a few salmon bypass seals via a small channel in front of our lunch spot. The water was crystal clear. A seal glided through the channel, an aerodynamic bullet with speckled skin and tucked-in flippers. It rose for a breath, saw us gawking humans and disappeared in an explosion of white water. The dumbfounded, bug-eyed expression of surprise on its face had us all laughing.

We continued toward Okeover Inlet, investigating a couple of shellfish farms, all the time aware of the end of our journey, wishing for more time, another night. And then we beached, unloaded, cleaned up and packed our vehicles. The New Zealanders said their farewells and we hit the road.

James and Karen rocking Desolation.

Radish Eyes

The summer is humming along in BC. Sarah and I are relishing the sun and heat. The garden is booming again. We're eating our raspberries for the first time this year, and the first zucchinis of the summer were barbecued on Wednesday.

The summer started with a bang, when we hit a deer on the island highway. Revise that sentence: the deer hit us. Perfect time of night, dusk settling in around 9.00pm. The deer stepped...no...suicidally leapt out from the side of the road. We were travelling on a four-lane highway with a speed limit of 110km/h. There was no chance to avoid the collision. My reflexes, ignoring everything my brain knows about hitting livestock on the open road (don't brake, don't swerve), braked and swerved. The Subaru performed a lovely, long slide, dipping down sideways into the grassy median between the lanes, and came to a rest facing the direction we had driven from. The deer was punted about 30-40 metres, from one side of the highway to the other. I would have loved a bird's eye view of its flight. The deer was quite dead. The Subaru too, with its radiator stoved in, headlights dangling, and hood crumpled. The car spent four weeks in the shop, as we drove an '09 Ford Focus courtesy car around Vancouver Island. CD players have really come a long way. And who would have thought I'd find myself enjoying automatic transmission.

At Trevor and Kate's wedding, Ucluelet.

Horne Lake Caves.

Quadra Island Slaughterfest, in the spring, courtesy of Mark and Megan. They raised the tastiest chooks, perfect for barbecued beer bum chicken.

Last weekend we headed into Strathcona Provincial Park with Doug and Karin. We hiked three hours into Circlet Lake, through mountain hemlock and cedar and sub-alpine meadows. We set up camp at the lake, lightened our loads, and hiked another three hours, ascending quickly to the north east ridge of Mt. Albert Edward, and following the ridge line to the mountain peak at 2,093 metres. Albert Edward is the sixth highest peak on Vancouver Island.

The peak of Albert Edward is above my head; Sarah on top.

Karin and Doug.

We had views of the mountain chain running the length of the island, as well as the backside of the Comox Glacier, the Strait of Georgia, and Quadra Island and Campbell River. Back at Circlet, we were swarmed by blackflies as we prepared dinner, eating on the move, and escaping to our tents.

Sunset south of Campbell River, looking north.

Return To The Gorge

There is a magical moment when you hear a band or a musician for the first time and an element of their music stirs something within you. One of the highlights of last year's Sasquatch music festival was the number of fresh discoveries, the performers, previously unknown to me, who conjured such emotions. Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, White Rabbits, the Heavenly States, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Vince Mira, Crudo, all ranked with the headlining acts and old favourites for energy and novel sound. Sasquatch 2009 didn't have as many of these moments. That's partially a result of my familiarity with many of this year's performers. The lineup this year seemed weaker as well, especially the headliners: Kings of Leon, Jane's Addiction, and Ben Harper; an over-hyped so-called "Southern U2," a band who's last great album came out in 1991, and the original Jack Johnson.

Kings of Leon seemed to pull in the popularists. Our crew - gathering from the Island, Vancouver and Williams Lake - battled border crossing queues, Seattle rush hour, and the three-lane crawl over Snoqualmie Pass to reach the Gorge Amphitheatre, situated on the Columbia River in the southern ranges of Washington. We arrived after midnight and set up camp on the far edge of a field that the previous year had been almost empty when we arrived seven hours later at dawn. Chaos reigned. There were many more people, with a number of 70,000 tossed about. Nine dollar cans of Coors and Pabst prevented drunken bedlam from dominating the event. The sun - "the burning orb of death" - ruled over us all for three straight days. It seared our skins and fried our brains. There was little shade and the crowd applauded when a lone cloud on Saturday shielded the sun late in the afternoon.


We entered early on Saturday to see Vince Mira, the unexpected star of the Yeti stage in 2008, who projects the voice of Johnny Cash from the body of a teenage boy. He opened the Sasquatch main stage shortly after noon and satisfied with a number of original compositions as well as the requisite Cash numbers. Familiarizing myself with the new layout of the festival - the shifting of the two side stages, Wookie and Yeti, to accommodate the prominence given the comedy/dance tent - I returned to Doves, a Manchester, England band I'd only come across this year. Passion Pit, a much hyped Massachusetts band, played with grooving rhythms, but lead singer Michael Angelakos's vocals were distracting, his off-key falsetto detracting from their sound.

I've long been a fan of M. Ward, a Portland singer-songwriter whose version of 'Rave On' was enchanting, but I needed more energy in my day and made the journey back to Wookie. Setting up were King Khan & The Shrines. I tried to identify King Khan amongst the band members only for him to parade onto stage for the opening song wearing nothing but tight undies, a cape and a feathery crown, sporting a staff and a luxurious belly, and preceded by a cheerleader waving pom-pons. Khan and his Shrines proceeded to rock the Wookie crowd with a mix of garage rock, punk and soul, the horn section blaring, keyboardist dazzling and one band member dropping his pants to demonstrate his mangina during 'I Wanna Be A Girl'. They were my pick of the day.

I returned to Sasquatch for DeVotchKa, a Denver, Colorado band whose four members fuse Eastern European styles with folk and punk (categorised as gypsy punk) and play a variety of exotic instruments, including theremin, bouzouki, Melodica, organ, double bass and sousaphone. The sousaphone was wicked, a giant silver tuba that slipped over the body of the female musician who played it. Following were Animal Collective, touring their latest album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, a critic's pick and a favourite of the year to date. I was disappointed with their show, feeling they overplayed the discordant nature of their work and left their harmonic pop friendliness unrealized. I left and saw slices of Sun Kil Moon's excellent acoustic set at Wookie and Ra Ra Riot's cello and violin-heavy chamber pop on the Yeti stage. Back on the main stage, The Decemberists played their latest album, The Hazards of Love, a rock opera with a continuous narrative thread, in its entirety. The two female guest vocalists, both lead singers of their own bands, had beautiful, powerful voices and the band played a tight set, punctuated by a naked couple making love on the edge of the amphitheatre.

The Gorge Amphitheatre during Animal Collective's set.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs had a giant eyeball hanging over the stage. I'm not sure of the significance but nonetheless they engaged the crowd. Karen O never stopped smiling, and an acoustic version of 'Maps' was the one mellow moment in a fierce performance. Unfortunately, to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs I had to miss Bon Iver, who friends tell me was sublime. Kings of Leon were not. The amphitheatre was packed for their show, but we bailed after a pair of limp songs.

Sunday was another cooking day with Sarah and myself front and centre in the pit for The Walkmen. Calexico brass played support on a few tracks, 'Canadian Girl' received a cheer from the large contingent from the north, 'The Rat' accelerated my day, and Hamilton Leithauser, The Walkmen's lead singer, held a pure note of ecstasy. They were superb. Calexico, from Tuscon, Arizona, have a Southwestern, mariachi sound. Their brass section was vibrant. We left before the conclusion of their set to see St. Vincent, the moniker of singer-songwriter Annie Clark. She performed her offbeat pop with a band and engaged the crowd like a seasoned professional as we failed to clap to the beat. It helps she's cute. Over on Yeti I found my first real discovery of the weekend, The Builders And The Butchers, a Portland band who cranked acoustic guitars and created mesmerizing songs.

Back at the Sasquatch stage I was lulled to a snooze by a sizzled brain, the aggressive punk of The Murder City Devils, and the crazed rants of their lead singer, Spencer Moody. He owned the stage, mouthing off the crowd and the VIP section as he took issue with heterosexuals, high school jocks, and privileged rich white kids. I heard 'faggots' repeated ad nauseum, as Moody professed his love for homosexuals. High entertainment. Refreshed, I descended into the pit for TV On The Radio, a Brooklyn band whose Dear Science was one of my albums of 2008. They played a energetic set, with highlights including 'Dancing Choose', 'I Was A Lover' and the closer 'Staring At The Sun'.

Nine Inch Nails, who are touring with Jane's Addiction, followed TV. Apparently this may be Trent Reznor's last tour, and we were treated to the full complement of his catalogue, with classics from Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral alongside more recent work from Ghosts and the like. Dry ice fogged the stage and Trent sweated like cheese in the sun. I wanted to check out Of Montreal, yet another band out of Athens, Georgia, who were playing at the same time on the Wookie stage. They were keeping the crowd bouncing with energetic, funky rhythms and electronic-pop melodies. All kinds of craziness were taking place on the stage - costumed creatures and miniature melodramatic performances - but we jetted back for the conclusion of NIN.

Jane's Addiction, famous for Nothing's Shocking from 1988 and Ritual de la Habitual from 1990, headlined Sunday. Perry Farrell stalked the stage and Dave Navarro produced slashing rhythms from his Signature PRS. They were tight and practised. The bands who have performed extensively are amazing to see live. They know how to make their set propulsive and keep the audience engaged with their show. NIN are such a band. REM and The Cure, two of last year's headliners, are the same. Jane's Addiction, still kicking after 24 years and a decade-long hiatus, revealed their experience.

Monday, May 25 was the anniversary of the first day Sarah and I kissed in a Christchurch student flat. Seven years together. We shared a bottle of Lindemans Pomme Lambic, a Belgian apple beer perfect for starting another sunny morning of drinking.


We grabbed a sun-drenched space on the grassy slope for Grizzly Bear's orchestral pop. The tempo went up a few notches with Santigold following on stage, playing her fourth show with a band. Her self-titled album is a diverse blend of dancehall, dub, reggae, ska and indie rock and her set was all of that and more. Santigold was full of sparkle, dancing around the stage and inviting members of the audience up to join her. I caught a portion of Blitzen Trapper's diverse sound on Wookie, before returning for Gogol Bordello. Another NYC band, they have been described as "a bit like The Clash and The Pogues having a fight...in Eastern Europe." More gypsy punk then, but much crazier than DeVotchKa. The crowd was wild, the music was up-tempo, with barely a pause between songs.

Fleet Foxes slowed the pace with their vocal harmonies. Their self-titled album was another of my favourite records of last year. One disadvantage of festival acts is the uneven sound quality, as technicians fiddle with sound levels while the performance begins. The bass was a little heavy for the first few songs of Fleet Foxes's set, but things were tweaked right by the latter half of their show. The band has become more comfortable on stage since last year's performance, even bantering with the crowd.

We left LA band Silversun Pickups and cruised the festival. We drank a fine American Amber Ale from Oregon's Rogue Brewery (smuggled past security) while appreciating the mellowness of Beach House. We put on our dancing shoes for the sampling mash-up madness of Girl Talk. We grooved to Erykah Badu's sultry soul and, as we slowly made our way from the festival, we listened for a time to the instrumental dynamics of Explosions In The Sky, an Austin, Texas post-rock band.

And then we walked out the gate, leaving Ben Harper to his fans, and the Gorge for another year.

Quote of the festival: "Nice vagina"
A woman squats against a fence in a quieter region of the festival grounds and urinates. Another woman sitting near my witnesses Mark and Meg says to the clandestine urinator as she stands: "You have a really nice vagina."

Cortes Island

Cortes Island hosted a double header last weekend. Oysterfest was on Saturday and the 3rd Annual Cortes Casual Cup occurred on Sunday.


Cortes Island was named in 1792 during the expedition of Galiano and Valdés, presumably after Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico. The island has a permanent population of roughly 1000 (as well as wolves) and is 150 km2 in area. Cortes has an isolated hippy atmosphere with many artists living on the island. Five of us journeyed to the island via two ferries, crossing from Campbell River to Quadra Island, and from the east coast of Quadra catching a second ferry to Cortes.

Aboard Tenaka travelling from Heriot Bay on Quadra Island to Whaletown, Cortes Island.

We pitched camp at our friend Darrin's uncle's house on Hague Lake, and continued on to Oysterfest at Squirrel Cove. The Cortesians put on quite the spread. The feature dish was done in several styles, breaded, fried, barbecued, and of course raw, with sauces and flavourings adding to the taste. Bacon-wrapped was a particular favourite. Sarah devoured the raw oysters, especially a new favourite called Black Pearl. Also on the menu were Manhatten and New England clam chowders, steamed mussels, barbecued spot prawns and chili-style little neck clams. We feasted.

Hague Lake

To work off our gluttony, we played the eighteen holes of the Cortes disc golf course. The course flows through second-growth fir and alder stands on the side of a ridge. The layout was easy to follow for newcomers, but challenged our skill level. Highly recommended.

We finished the night at the registration for the Cortes Casual Cup, an ultimate hat tournament. Ultimate is a seven-a-side sport in which two teams score points by passing a 175 gram disc (Frisbee is the brand name, and not generally used) to a player in an end zone. Ultimate is self-refereed and non-contact and relies on "spirit of the game" to avoid undesired conflict. A hat tournament involves players being "drawn from a hat" and placed in teams, with the intent of creating balanced teams. We registered and played pick-up with the welcoming Cortes locals.

Next day we arrived and divided into our respective teams: Flirts, Hugs, Kisses and Smiles. I played for Hugs with a mixture of Cortes Islanders and off-islanders, all from locations around Vancouver Island. We won our first two games, defeating Sarah's Flirts in the second, despite their goosing tactics. After lunch we played Smiles. The game was competitive, with scores level at 3-3, when I tweaked my hamstring. I was done for the day. Smiles started playing zone defence, not exactly in the spirit of the Casual Cup, and Hugs, lacking experience of zone, found it difficult to respond. We were smoked. The final was between Smiles and Kisses. Smiles took it 13-10.

Whaletown

Snow to Surf

The Snow to Surf is a team relay race with nine legs. The race begins on the local ski hill, Mount Washington, and finishes at the Comox Marina. Sarah and I raced with a team comprising ultimate regulars and partners. We entered the open mixed category with five men and four women and a combined age of 262 years. Over 150 teams were entered in the event. Our team, after a short and lethargic confabulation, earned the pseudonym Gitmo Gaolbyrds (pronounced "Gitmo Goalbyrds" by the announcer at the finish). We were convicts on the run.

Race map

The race starts on Mount Washington with the alpine leg, a downhill ski. The racers are staggered by an uphill run to where their skis are waiting for the swift journey down. Megan was our skier. Meg hadn't skied in ten years, but had started skiing at the age of three, which was qualification enough for our team. Meg said the uphill run (in ski boots) stretched her lungs in new ways (that's not exactly quote/unquote); her muscle memory took over for the downhill. The second transition was the Nordic leg, 8 kilometres of cross-country skiing. Ang performed admirably, earning the meanest blisters on a difficult leg with zero preparation (zero prep could have been our race mantra). She handed over to me at the first running leg with our team in second last position. I was hyper after watching almost every other runner take off down the mountain access road. I was also hyper from bouncing around in shorts in 1 degree Celcius, with occasional skiffs of light, pebbly snow falling. I ran my 6.8 kilometres in a quick time, carried down by the constant slope. My legs felt strong. I didn't see another competitor. (Me and round-the-world sailsmen, much in common.) I really (no, really) wanted to pass somebody.

Mount Washington access road:
Tricky to get a sense from the sky, but I think I ran this section.

I handed over to our second runner, Alana, and our team began to reel in the opposition. Alana ran 6.4 kilometres, passing a number of competitors, and handed over to Grayson at the mountain bike exchange. Grayson made up a lot of time, cruising both gravel logging road and single track to Comox Lake. He passed on to Douglas who kayaked the 5 kilometre course in choppy waters and treacherous side winds, clawing his way up the field. Sarah was at the next transition, the 30 kilometre road bike leg. Her trusty Norco MTB with bald tyres performed like a road bike, and she arrived at the Courtenay exchange in a personal best of 55 minutes. Awaiting Sarah were Mark and Quinton, our vigorous canoeists. They paddled 5 kilometres through a strong head wind and very choppy water on Comox Harbour. The rest of the convicts drove to a vantage point over the water, where we spotted the boys. We yelled indecipherable encouragement (and were rewarded with a raised oar from Quin and redoubled paddling from Mark), as we raised beers and slid greasy pizza down our gullets. We arrived at the Comox Marina, the race finish, a few minutes before the canoeists. The boys came in full-steam ahead and Quin raced from the bow to the bell.

Our team finished in 115th position, with a time of 5:40:21. We were the 22nd team in the Open Mixed category. Talk about bragging rights. We did climb 40 positions from the end of the Nordic leg. The first placed team, North Island Tanks (Open Men), finished in 3:24:20. Endorphins surged throughout the day and beer flowed in the afternoon. (Muscles seized up the next morning.) I think we'll be back.

Kamon

Imperial Seal of Japan, the mon of the Japanese Imperial family, a 16 petal chysanthemum with a second set of petals visible behind.

Mon are Japanese heraldic symbols. Kamon refer specifically to family symbols or crests. They serve much the same purpose as European heraldic devices. Sarah's tattoo and our recent use of the Mukai family crest for invitations led me to research Japanese crests. Much assistance was provided by John Dower's study, The Elements of Japanese Design: A Handbook of Family Crests, Heraldry & Symbolism (1971).

Mon have their roots in Japan through the transmission of the Chinese culture of the T'ang Dynasty (618-907) to the Japanese court. Chinese emblems of the Sun and Moon, Blue Dragon, White Tiger and Three-legged Crow were symbols of the early Japanese sovereigns.

The rise of the samurai class and feudal society produced an increase in the use of heraldic devices. The Gempei War (1180-85) involved two factions, the Minamoto, who fought under banners of white, and the Taira, under red. The battles of the Gempei War were scattered and formalistic, fought by small, swift bands of warriors. The use of mon was rare at this time. The scale of warfare expanded following the Gempei War, and with the increase in the number of combatants came a rise in the use of mon. Dower concludes that the "predominant simplicity of the earliest warrior crests reflects the military concern which motivated their adoption; most were plain geometric forms and simple representational figures."The Hojo clan's three-triangle fish scale emblem [above] and the Ashikaga clan's geometric pattern [below] are representative of this period.

Initially, heraldic emblems were used as a common symbol of identification by all followers of a specific clan. As Dower notes, by the mid-1300s "the use of crests was so well established throughout Japan that the authors of the Taiheiki [a Japanese historical epic] could describe the forces which made up an army just by listing the markings on their banners". Increasing their popularity were the elaboration of crest designs, the enhancing of previously simple crests, and the adoption of a number of crests for different occasions, for instance, retaining one crest for battle and another for the court. These trends parallel increased contact between the court, and its fashionable aesthetics, and the samurai class.

Minamoto clan gentian crest [above] and Taira clan butterfly crest [below].

Around the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth crests mon began to be associated with individual family units. The rise of kamon was accelerated by the adoption of a rule of primogeniture for the inheritance of an estate, which forced younger sons to form independent families of their own, often taking a new surname in the process. The Minamoto clan contained 4 subclans, 27 major branches and 569 different surnames by the end of the feudal period. Common clan emblems no longer served to delineate such numbers accurately. New variations on crests were created to represent newly independent families.




The crests of the three "great unifiers" of Japan, in descending order: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582); Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598); and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Oda's crest is a China flower, a Chinese design not based on any specific flower, enclosed by a court pattern dating back to T'ang China. Toyotomi's crest is a paulownia flower pattern. The most popular design of all Japanese mon, the paulownia is considered an emblem of the imperial throne, and was bestowed upon Toyotomi by the imperial court. According to Chinese legend, the phoenix, bird of immortality, alights only in the branches of the paulownia when it returns to earth. The design is now a symbol of the Office of the Prime Minister of Japan. Tokugawa's crest is the hollyhock, a plant associated with a presitigious Kyoto shrine.

Wood sorrel mon

During the Tokugawa shogunate, the use of mon spread from the samurai and warrior classes to the peasant and merchant classes, and to the artisans, Kabuki actors and courtesans of the floating world of the Edo period. Crests became a common element of all classes. Hank Mukai tells me the Mukai kamon was selected primarily for its form. The crest is composed of a trifoliate clover-like wood sorrel leaf with three stylised sword blades inserted between each of the leaves and three blades penetrating from the leaf stem. The crest is similar to the above wood sorrel mon. The wood sorrel (katabami) produces many seeds and reproduces vigorously; this characteristic was seen as a token of future proliferation and prosperity. The wood sorrel is also known as the mirror plant (kagamigusa). It was used for polishing bronze mirrors, as well as forming a medicinal salve. The wood sorrel mon enjoyed much popularity among the samurai class.