Ise Pilgrimage

These two draincovers are from Ise in Mie Prefecture and show pilgrims in the Edo period who descended on the shrines at Ise by their millions.

At that time, travel for commoners was restricted, but pilgrimage was about the only reason you would be allowed to travel. There were many pilgrimage sites across Japan, but a very popular one, possibly the most popular, was Ise due to its reputation as a site for prayers for good harvest. Each year hundreds of thousands would go to Ise, and in a few years there were literally millions of pilgrims.

Japanese pilgrimage has been seen as an early form of tourism, with many guidebooks being printed. Some aspects of contemporary Japanese tourism seems to have roots in pilgrimage:- the package tour, omiyage, etc. Notwithstanding the religious aspect, it was a form of tourism and around each pilgrimage site huge "entertainment" districts served the needs of the pilgrims. At Ise, a single brothel was believed to have had over 1,000 girls working there.

Ken Iwata Mother & Child Museum

The Ken Iwata Mother & Child Museum opened a few months ago in the tiny fishing village of Munakata on Omishima island in the Set Inland sea. It is part of Imabari City on Shikoku.

I can find very little information about the sculptor Ken Iwata other than he was born in 1924 and lives in Saitama. Mother and child seems to be a major preoccupation of his work.

I can find no connection between him and Omishima, and the only connection seems to be the architect of the museum, Toyo Ito.

Toyo Ito is also not from Omishima, but within the village of Munakata he has built 4 structures, the other three I will post on in the coming weeks.

The museum is basically a circular concrete wall with an overhanging lip and a couple of glass walls.

The museum is open from 9 to 5 and entrance is 300yen.

A few of the 44 sculptures on display....

Shikoku 88 Temple 5 Jizoji

Temple number 5, in Itano Town, enshrines Jizo, an immensely popular deity in Japan. The temple itself is nothing special. many of the buildings date from the 18th century as it was, like so many other, burnt down by Chosokabe in the 16th century.

The Nio were rather nice and unusual, both in their style and coloration. It is easy to see the Hindu roots.....

The founding legend states that the temple was founded by Kukai (Kobo Daishi) in the early 9th century.

Behind the temple on the hillside is a huge U-shaped hall housing hundreds of statues. If you are walking the pilgrimage trail you come to this hall first before reaching the temple proper. The left hand hall houses statues of the 500 disciples of the Buddha, each with quite a different expression.

The other side contains many statues of bodhisattvas.

I revisited Jizo-ji many years later while wqlking the Shikoku Fudo Myo pilgrimage. photos from this visit can be seen here.

A new red hanya mask

I just finished another mask. A fairly standard hanya in the Iwami style. Hopefully this winter I can replenish my stock of masks as there is little to do in the garden, the firewood is all chopped, and the drier air speed up the process.

It is, of course, for sale. My other masks are here

Kanzui Matsuri 4

Its just about midnight at the small shrine in the mountain settlement of Kanzui not far from my own village. The annual matsuri got underway about 3 hours ago and the fourth dance starts, Michigaeshi, a not very common dance. A few more people arrive and now the audience just outnumbers the dancers and musicians.

Michigaeshi is a fairly typical 2 person dance, the hero and the demon, although the ending is most unusual.

The hero is the kami Takemikazuchi, a complex deity with connections to thunder, military might, and protection from earthquakes in his home area of Kashima, Ibaraki Prefecture. He is also enshrined at the Fujiwara's home shrine of Kasuga in Nara where he is considered their tutelary deity. The Fujiwara ruled over the kashima area so either they adopted him from there or possibly brought him there. According to the Kojiki version of the Kuniyuzuri myth he was one of the kami sent to subdue Izumo, though Izumo records make no mention of him.

The demon is unnamed, though follows the classic pattern of being a flesh-eating demon harassing local villagers.

This third video clip shows the battle between the two. If you cant be bothered to watch all the videos, this is the one to watch.

The hero of course triumphs, but, in an unuusal twist does not kill the demon. Instead he offers him the possibility of redemption if he travels to Takachiho in Kyushu, site of the "descent" of the Yamato ancestors from heaven, and take part in the rice harvest there.

When I first came to Iwami and started watching kagura I remember several people telling me that this was their favorite dance precisely because the demon is spared and not killed.

Happy New Year of the Dragon

This is a detail from Twin Dragons on the ceiling in Kennin-Ji in Kyoto. It was painted in 2002 to commemorate the 800 year anniversary of the temples founding. The artist is Koizumi Junsaku and the painting measures 11.4 by 15.7 meters.

I wish all of you a great new year. In a few days I will be back home and can start posting more regularly again.

The White Rabbit of Inaba

The year of the rabbit is coming to a close, so time to tell the story of the white rabbit of Inaba.

Hakuto Shrine is located near the beach a little east of Tottori City. The old province name for this area was Inaba. The kami of Hakuto Shrine is Hakutojin, the kami name for the white rabbit of Inaba.

The rabbit was on one of the Okis islands, about 50kms offshore (now a part of Shimane). He wished to travel to the mainland so he a devised a plan that involved tricking some crocodiles. Incidentally, the story is often told nowadays with sharks instead of crocodiles, but the original story quite clearly does not involve sharks.

The rabbit suggested to the crocodiles that the rabbit clan was much bigger than the crocodile clan, and to prove it he would need to count all the members of the crocodile clan so he suggested that they all line up and as he stepped on them one at a time he would be able to count them and come to a definitive answer. The crocodiles agreed and so the rabbit began to make his way to the mainland using the crocodiles as stepping stones.

The rabbit was just about to the beach when he rather foolishly decided to shout out "Hah! tricked you..." upon which the last crocodile lunged for the rabbit and while not able to kill it managed to strip the fur from the rabbit. The story now intersects with another legend, that of Okuninushi, his eighty brothers, and Princess Yakami.

Okuninushis brothers, the Yasogami, were coming along the beach on the way to see Princess Yakami to see which of them she would choose as a husband. The Yasogami were quite cruel, and seeing the poor suffering rabbit they suggested that it would find relief by bathing in seawater and then standing in the wind. Of course this just caused more pain and suffering for the hapless rabbit. Following along in the rear carrying the baggage for his brothers was Okuninushi. He told the rabbit to bathe is freshwater and then roll in sedge pollen, which he did and was then healed. In gratitude the rabbit told Okuninushi that even though he was just the bagggage carrier he would be the one chosen by Princess Yakami.

Myths, like people, travel great distances. There seem to be several possible sources of this myth. In Indonesia there is a famous story involving a small deer that tricks crocodiles into lining up across a river on the pretense of being counted but really so the deer can cross the river. Also, the Koguryo and Puyo peoples of what is now northern Korea had foundation legends that involve a hero crossing water on the backs of turtles that seem to be derived from older stories from further south in China that had crocodiles fulfilling the same role. There are several more myths from Koguryo that mirror Japanese myths, and all along the Japan Sea coast are shrines dedicated to a variety of kami who came here from what is now Korea.

Kawara in walls

Kawara, ceramic rooftiles originally introduced from Korea for early temple roofs gradually spread to palaces and other major buildings.

In the Edo period they began to be mass produced and came to be more widespread. By the twentieth century they had become the standard rooftile.

Old rooftiles abound. Piled in stacks against collapsing buildings there must be millions of them lying around. A lot of people use them in gardens, to make paths and raised beds.

Traditionally they have been recycled and used in the construction of walls.

Kawara fascinate me. They make great photos. More galleries on kawara can be found here

Suwa Shrine, Itano

Suwa Shrine in Itano, Tokushima, is located between temples 2 & 3. It is one of the approximately 10,000 branch shrines of Suwa Taisha up in Nagano.

The grounds were pretty unkempt and it looked as if the shrine was not used by people much.

The main kami enshrined in Suwa shrines are Takeminakata and his wife Yasakatome. According to the legend he was a son of Okuninushi who did not wish to hand over the land to the emissaries sent by Amaterasu. he challenged one of them to a trial of strength and was defeated. This is considered to be the mythological origin of sumo. He fled to Suwa in what is now Nagano.

The legend would seem to indicate that there was resistance within the confederacy of tribes/clans/countries that centered on Izumo to the takeover by the Yamato.

Vacation 2011 Day 9 to the highest point

On the third morning in the Jebel Sahro the dawn and sunrise were well worth waking early for.

The first few kilometers of the days hike was through a narrow canyon. We had come here yesterday afternoon to take advantage of the running water to bathe.

As the year progresses the water, originating as melted snow in the high country, will slowly decrease. There probably wont be any more running water till we come out of the jebel sahro.

We had lunch at a small trading post at the foot of a golden escarpment we would climb in the afternoon.

I headed off ahead of the group and started the climb to tonights campsite. Its not that I am unsociable, but for me its hard to enjoy the landscape with people chattering. Also it allowed me to climb at my own pace and not have to keep up.

The views from on top were sublime, so I plonked myself down and sat for the next few hours and watched as the vista laid out in front of me changed with the passing of the sun and clouds.

I knew I would be up before dawn to take in the dawn and sunrise.