名誉 · Meiyo The Choice No One Witnesses - Japan Washi Art
名誉 · Meiyo The Choice No One Witnesses - Japan Washi Art
The age of personal branding has produced a specific confusion about honor: the conflation of reputation with character, of how one appears with who one is.
Meiyo（名誉）cuts through this with a single question: what do you do when no one is watching?
Not approximately the same thing.
The same thing. The standard that applies equally in the meeting room and in the empty office at 7am, in the public commitment and in the private moment when honoring it costs something and no one would know.
The two characters of 名誉 carry this argument in their composition:
名 (name/reputation) and 誉 (honor itself) — the external recognition and the internal reality it is supposed to point to. In this piece, 誉 carries very slightly more visual weight than 名 — the internal reality marginally outweighing the external name, as Bushido always understood it should.
The piece is rendered in the traditional vertical arrangement —
名 above, 誉 below — the honor supporting the name that depends on it.
For the person hose standard does not require an audience.
◆What is Awa Washi?
Awa Washi is Japanese paper produced in Yoshino City, Tokushima Prefecture; Naka Town, Naka District; and Ikeda Town, Miyoshi City. It is made using traditional Japanese paper-making techniques such as “flow-making” and “pool-making.”Awa Washi is characterized by the unique texture and natural feel of hand-made paper, along with its durable quality—thin yet strong and resistant to tearing, even when wet.
◆History of Awa Washi
The exact origins of Awa Washi are unclear, but it is thought to have begun around 806–810 AD. Records indicate that the Awa Inbe clan cultivated hemp and kozo (paper mulberry) and produced paper, suggesting that washi production had already begun by the Nara period.In modern times, Awa washi gradually declined alongside Westernization. However, one paper-making company persevered in preserving the tradition, and in 1976, Awa washi was designated a Traditional Craft.
◆Design
This artwork was designed in my Kyoto studio. Some of the images were designed using digital design tools, while others were designed using artificial intelligence (AI) with my own instructions and references to traditional artworks.
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Let customers speak for us
Stayed at a bad job way too long.
Told myself it was loyalty.
Turns out there's a word for what I was actually doing — and loyalty isn't it.
Chugi is the chapter. The short version is: real loyalty includes the question ""does this still deserve what I'm giving it?""
I had completely stopped asking that.
Didn't make me feel great about the past three years, not gonna lie.
But it reframed how I think about commitment going forward, which
I think is the point.
Good book. Challenging in the right ways.
All members of the SHOGUN production staff should read this.
The stories of Japanese samurai are fascinating.
The best choice not only to understand the spirit of Bushido, but also to embody it.
