Senbazuru... Thousand Origami Cranes

Senbazuru, 1000 origami cranes strung together, are found all over Japan in various kinds of locations. They are very often done in multiple colors, and in fact kits to make them this way are very common.

Cranes were considered to live for a thousand years, hence each one represents a year. Dating back to the Edo Period, they were given as gifts for good luck to couples at weddings and new born babies etc.

Nowadays they are most strongly associated with Sadako Sasaki, the young Hiroshima girl who died from leukemia contracted from the radiation of the Hiroshima A bomb.

The Japanese Crane was though to be extinct, but has made a comeback though are still very rare and endagered. Edo Period cookbooks consistently ranked the crane as the best tasting bird for eating. These two facts may be related.

All these photos are from my recent walk around Shodoshima. The last photo shows senbazuru made out of metallic paper, but hung in a cave where soot from candles and lanterns have coated them.

Kyushu Pilgrimage Temple 11 Myokan-ji

Temple 11, Myokanji, is a small temple notable for its "zen" garden. The Honzon is a seated kannon that is supposed to be quite unusual, but unfortunately the main hall was locked up and there was no-one home when I visited.

Locally the temple is known for its acupuncture clinic. Being a Shingon temple, there were a couple of nice Fudo Myoo statues. Many of these smaller temples on the pilgrimage are in no way outstanding.

There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to pilgrimages. For many, especially those that drive or take tour buses, the emphasis is on the temples themselves. For those who walk, the emphasis is often more on the journey and the space between the temples.

For many who walk, there seems to be an attempt to complete the pilgrimage as quickly as possible as if it is some sort of a race. For me, I like to take my time and keep my eyes open.....

Hiwasa Hachiman Shrine

In the morning of the tenth day of my walk along the Shikoku Pilgrimage I came into the small fishing port and town of Hiwasa. Right next door to a museum displaying information about the turtles who lay eggs in the area was the local Hachiman Shrine.

It was not a very big shrine, but had the usual collection of big trees, komainu, shimenawa, ema, zuijin, etc, some of which are shown here. However there were 7 very large storage sheds, each of which held a "chosa", a kind of matsuri float often translated as Taiko Yattai. Each one weighed more than ton and held a taiko drum and several drummers. They are carried on  huge frames made of giant bamboo measuring about 6 x 6 meters.

Each chosa is carried by members of each of the seven communities that make up the town, and along with the mikoshi are paraded around the shrine grounds before being carried down to the sea into which they are dipped to ensure good fortune for the fishermen.

The Hiwasa Hachiman Aki Matsuri takes pleace each October.

The Garden at Myokanji

I came to an appreciation of the Japanese garden quite late. The first two years I lived in Japan I was in Kyoto which reputedly has a large number of highly ranked gardens, but I didnt visit any of them.

Like many people, I think my favorite style is karesansui, the dry gardens of rock and sand.

This one is at Myokani, a small temple in Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture, and doesnt appear in any lists of gardens to see, but I found it quite appealing.

Karesansui is strongly associated with Zen, though I believe they were imported from China a little before Zen and the use of white gravel has been attributed to a Shinto influence. Myokanji is not a Zen temple, rather a Shingon one, but it may have been Zen in earlier times though I have been unable to find a date for the garden.

More Hagi Teramachi

The temple district, Teramachi, in Hagi is not on the main tourist route in the town but is well worth a visit if you are in Hagi for more than one day. There are a few historical buildings, a maze of narrow lanes, and of course temples... a few of which I have already posted about.

Kaichoji is a fairly large temple with an impressive gate, but what is interesting is the main hall which was originally built as a Confucian shrine. It was located at the Meirinkan, the domain school that revered Confucius. After the temple burned down in 1874 they purchased the hall and rebuilt it here as the temples main hall.

Red-bibbed Jizo abound, as do cemeteries. In my area graves are built behind houses, but in many places in Japan they are located at temples.

One can often see huge pyramids composed of gravestones, usually belonging to people who no longer have an living relatives in the area to care for them. These quite large, smooth rocks are unmarked and are I believe marker stones to unknown people.

Kyushu Pilgrimage Temple 12 Kinsoji

Kinsoji is a relatively modern temple, not being founded until 1914. Its location is right behind the Kibune Shrine in Iizuka that was very popular with boatmen on the two river forks that run nearby and I suspect that may have had something to do with it.

No-one was home when I visited so I couldn't get inside to see the Fudo Myo enshrined there. It is known locally as Chiri Kiri Fudo, and as best as I can ascertain it was prayed to to prevent "convulsions", in this sense I think it means fits of temper by babies. It also prevented children from running awaya from home.

It was a very small temple and hard to find as it looks just like a house. The giveaway was the Fudo Myo statue outside.

The Big Freeze

It had been a very, very mild winter so far. I'd already bought seed potatoes for planting. Then winter came. We get a fair amount of snow usually, but the next day it melts. maybe once a winter we will get a heavy snowfall that stays around for a few days.

This year it snowed for a week and temperatures didn't get above freezing. As happens regularly when the weather is anything other than normal, ie if it rains a lot, is very windy, etc, the local train line stops running.

This year many places in the area suffered from burst pipes. It happens sometimes, but this year it happened a lot. Even some of the mains burst and people are still without water. We had a couple of burst pipes as our water lines are outside, but lots of people had burst pipes indoors. Most Japanese houses are not very warm.

Didn't stop the monkeys though, they need to eat and so a quick trip to our gardens was in order...

Latest Masks

The two latest masks I completed. Every winter I have a rather optimistic plan to finish lots of new masks. Summers are too humid to make them as everything stays soft and doesn't dry properly. As usual the universe conspires to give me so many chores to do that I don't get the time I want on my masks.

These are two of the most popular of my masks. The customer has been waiting for them for a year. Obviously a very patient man, but he did say that my masks were worth waiting for. Sucker for flattery that I am. The garden will be demanding my time in a moon or two, but hopefully I will get time now for some new masks. I have been trying to finish a couple of Kitsune masks for three years now......

Buy Handmade Masks From Japan

Manhole Rice

The most common motif by far  used in the designs on manhole covers in japan is the cherry blossom. Considering the central place occupied by rice in Japanese identity it is surprising that it does not appear more often than it does. This first one is from Mizuho up in the mountains near where Iwami meet Hiroshima.

I found this second one in the village of Koshita south of Usa in northern Kyushu.

Also in northern Kyushu, but on the opposite side in Fukuoka, this one is from Itoshima, one of the very ancient centers of early Japanese intereactions with Asia.

The final one is from near Kurayoshi in Tottori and it shows a farm woman using a senbakoki, a threshing machine with a steel "comb" that separates the the easr and grains from the stalks. Prior to its invention in the 17th Century a tool made from a piece of split bamboo, a kokibashi, was used.

Kibune-gu Shrine, Iizuka

Pronounced Kifune but written Kibune, this small local shrine in the outskirts of Iizuka is a branch of the famous Kifune shrine north of Kyoto.

The nameplate on the fairly new torii names it as Kibune-gu, and this is the first time I have seen gu used for a Kibune shrine. Gu is often applied to Hachiman and Tenjin shrines, Hachimangu and Tenmangu, and shrine terminology has become somewhat confusing since the establishment of Shinto in the mid 19th Century. Commonly when I am asking locals about a shrine they will use the term Omiya.

Kifune shrines enshrine two water kami, Takaokami and Kuraokami, associated strongly with rainfall. It was donating horses to the shrine in the case of drought or flood that traditiona has it led to Ema, votive plaques.

There were numerous small secondary shrines in the grounds, some no doubt local Aragami, but there was no information signboard so I cannot be specific.