“Dreams, memories, the sacred–they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.” - Yukio Mishima
Gosekku-zubyKakizaki Hakyō, with hagoita for the first month, peach blossoms for the third, irises for the fifth, the two lovers for the seventh, and chrysanthemum motifs for the ninth; from the collection of Hakodate City Museum (wikipedia)