“Cherry Blossoms are about beauty and life and death. They’re extreme – there’s something hopeful yet hopeless about them. They’re art but taken from nature....Blossoms are optimistic and bright yet fragile, just like we are.”
—Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst’s eight-part series entitled The Virtues is inspired by Bushidō, the Japanese samurai code of ethics. In 1900, Nitobe Inazō published a book titled Bushidō: The Soul of Japan, which intended to explain the practice of Bushidō to western audiences. According to Nitobe, Bushidō literally translates to ‘Military-Knight-Ways’ and it is a set of rules that Japanese nobles were expected to maintain in their daily lives. This code is divided into eight virtues, which relate to various customs, such as the tea ceremony, and behaviors, such as tranquility in the face of danger. These Eight Virtues of Bushidō are Justice, Courage, Mercy, Politeness, Honesty, Honor, Loyalty, and Control, which form the individual titles of Hirst's acclaimed series.
