Maneki Neko Museum

 

The Maneki Neko Museum is home to more than 700 examples of Maneki-neko, the "beckoning cat" that probably originated in Edo in the mid 19th century, though Kyoto makes a claim for it too.

The Japanese gesture for "come here" looks a lot like the gesture of waving goodbye in western cultures and the maneki-neko has one of its paws raised, either right or left. Some examples are motorized to raise and lower the paw.

They are made out of stone, ceramic, plastic, or papier mache and can be found in a variety of colors. Usually white, which represents general good luck, but red ones symbolize good health, black to ward off evil, and gold or yellow for wealth.

The museum is in a couple of renovated farmhouses up in the mountains north of Okayama City in a village called Kanayamaji, and though there is no public transport to the place the museum is very popular and even gets lots of tour buses.

I visited on my third day of walking along the Chugoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage.

Taketomi Island Village

Taketomi 竹富島

Taketomi is a small island a 10 minute  ferry ride from Ishigaki Island in Okinawa Prefecture. The small village on the island of about 300 inhabitants is registered as a Group of Historic Buildings a classification I refer to as Preservation District for simplicity. It is one of only two such districts in Okinawa. For other preservation districts I have covered in this blog please click here.

The defining features of the village architecture are the stone walls surrounding each property, the low, single storey homes, and the tile roofs. However, the tile roofs are a very modern addition, the first one on Taketomi not being until 1905.

Historically tile roofs were only allowed for the elite of Okinawan society. That changed in 1879 when Okinawa became part of Japan, and there are still one or two traditional thatched roofs on Taketomi.

Related posts are the Shisa of Taketomi, masks of Taketomi, and Water Buffalo of Taketomi.

Ishigaki Sea Salt

Buy Ishigaki Bath Salts from Japan

Kitsuki Samurai House Exteriors

 

In the small castle town of Kitsuki in Oita there is a well preserved former samurai district with some of the Edo Period samurai residences open to the public.

In this area resided the higher ranking samurai so their homes were relatively large and luxurious. A couple are still thatched but most have tile roofs.

This is one of the more than 100 preservation districts in japan where enough buildings and infrastructure from historical times still exist to be able to give an iression on how things looked back then....

Later I will post photos of the interiors of these houses. Related posts are......  Kitsuki Samurai District, Kitsuki Samurai Gardens, and  Kitsuki Castle.

Shiranuhi Culture Plaza

 

Shiranuhi is a small town in rural Kumamoto. Shiranuhi Culture Plaza is a modrn building housing the library and a small museum.

It is one of the projects of the Kumamoto Artpolis and it opened in 1999. The architect was Atsushi Kitagawara.

The building itself is a simple, single-storey, rectangular block, however, it is encased in a framework that is much larger and covered in horizontal slats. The effect is to make the building more monumental in appearance and at the same time somewhat dazzling.

I likd it. To see other posts on Kumamoto Artpolis projects click on the label at the bottom of the post.

Matsubase Shrine

 

Matsubase is a small town in Kumamoto that I reached in the afternoon of my 45th day walking around Kyushu. Matsubase Shrine is the main shrine in the centre of town.

Known through most of history as Matsubase Gongen, the shrine now enshrines Izanami, Hayatamao, and Kotosakano.

The gingko trees and a few maple were nice with their color, but the most impressive tree was a giant camphor tree said to be over 800 years old. Camphor trees seem to be the sacred tree of choice at shrines in Kyushu.

Not far from the shrine was the next building in the Kumamoto Artpolis project for me to check out......

A Couple of Mysteries Solved

Mysteries

Heading north through the paddies north of Yatsushiro I was surprised to see tractors planting in flooded paddies. I had read that in the far south of Kyushu some places were able to squeeze two crops of rice a year because it was so warm, but late November seemed a weird time to be planting.

Later, a closer look at some paddies and it sure didn't look like any kind of rice i had seen before. Another mystery was that as I walked through each small settlement scattered across the plain there was the incessant clatter of machinery coming from farm buildings.

I was finally able to peer inside one of these buildings and suddenly all became clear. It was not rice being grown around here but a plant called Igusa, a kind of rush-grass, and the material that makes the mats that cover tatami flooring.

The area around Yatsushiro has been growing Igusa for 500 years and is now the main source for the material domestically. I have seen a few, small tatami workshops, and there are some high-end manufacturers, but most tatami in Japan now is mass-produced in Chima.

Curious Komainu

Komainu

While heading north across the coastal plain north of Yatsushiro I stopped in at about a dozen small shrines. They were mostly very small, local shrines, none of them famous. As usual when visiting shrines I look around for anything unusual or out of the ordinary. As always I am looking for diversity. What I did discover were these curious Komainu that shared some stylistic similarity with each other but were quite different from other styles I have seen.

The first is a wooden komainu inside a zuijinmon. Wooden komainu were the original style and can still be found inside gates or inside shrines buildings. The other 4 photos are two pairs I found at two different shrines.

Unusually the first pair both seem to have closed mouths. One of each of the two pairs were raised up on their front legs, the other laying down..

Over the twenty years I have been visiting shrines I have seen a lot of new komainu placed in shrines. mostly they are of one specific design and so are exactly the same from one end of the country to the other. It saddens me that diversity is being lost, slowly but surely, to be replaced with national homogenity.

Yatsushiro Monument Kilali

Yatsushiro Monument Kilali

Day 45 of my first walk around Kyushu and it's time to head north out of Yatsushiro towards Kumamoto City. My first stop is the Shinkansen station a little outside the city, Shin Yatsushiro Station.

Standing in front of the station on the east side is Monument Kilali, a project of Kumamoto Artpolis.

It looks quite flimsy and is roughly the size and shape of a small house. Its not a building, though I guess it could be called a shelter. It seems to be made of steel but in fact is made of thin sheets of concrete.

It was built in 2004 and designed by the young architect Kumiko Inui. I liked it

Historic Streetscape of Takehara

 

Takehara is a small town on the coast of Hiroshima, east of Hiroshima City. It flourished as a port in Medieval japan when the Inland Sea was the main transportation route.

In the Edo Period, it prospered as a salt production centre, with tons of salt being exported, mostly to Edo. An old area of the town with merchant houses, warehouses, and the inevitable sake breweries is one of the Historic Preservation Districts.

It is in the Top 100 Most Scenic Towns in Japan, and also one of many small towns that advertise themselves as "Little Kyoto", something I would consider a warning rather than a recommendation.

Some of the buildings are open to the public and I will post on them later. In the last couple of years the town has become more well known due to the so-called "rabbit Island" which lies within its city limits.

Hateiji Temple 5 on the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage

 

Hateiji Temple was rather curious. On the one hand it appeared deserted and unused, but on the other there was a recently maintained gate with some striking Nio statues.

Other than the nio, and a small bell tower there was nothing else in the grounds. It was however home to a bustling kindergarten. I have seen quite a few smaller temples and shrines that have leased or rented some of their grounds to such establishments. In cities, they often become car parks.

The Nio were quite remarkable and suggested that in earlier times the temple was more important and prosperous. Above the entrance to the main hall the signboard displayed the temple's "mountain name", possibly Toraisan, though I am informed it uses an obscure kanji character.

The paper nameslips attached to the building suggest that this was one of the temples on the original Iwami kannon Pilgrimage that started in nearby Iwami Ginzan. A list of the original pilgrimage temples included more than a third that no longer exist, probably destroyed in the anti-Buddhist violence of early Meiji.

This "new" Iwami pilgrimage I am following starts in Oda City and I am getting close to the end of my third day walking it. This newer pilgrimage is called Iwami Mandala Pilgrimage, and though it has 33 main temples, there are a rather large number of "extra" temples.