Shimenawa Diversity

Shimenawa, the sacred ropes most commonly found at Shinto shrines, come in a wide variety of styles, shapes, and sizes.

The simplest would simply be a length of string with shiden hanging from it such as would be used to line the roads leading to a shrine during matsuri, or to enclose a temporary sacred space.

Thicker rope is commonly used, usually made of rice straw, but increasingly make of plastic. The long shimenawa used to connect sacred rocks would be of this type.

When it comes to size and sculptural form, the shimenawa of Izumo rank high, including the largest shimenawa in the world.



Recently in the Bitchu area (now part of Okayama Prefecture) I found this unusual design at several shrines.

Shimenawas with fringes I've seen at several places. This one is at one of the shrines on Yoshidayama in Kyoto City.

There are severak styles that involve the thicker ropes being tightly wrapped to make them smoother. This one is at one of the Munakata Shrines in northern Kyushu.

There are several styles of shimenawa that are braided. I believe one of these styles is known as Kasuga style. The one above was a common design around the base of Mount Daisen in Tottori.

Very short shimenawa can often be found on Hokora (wayside shrines) or Kamidana (household altars. This one is up in Higashi Izumo

Part of my continued fascination with visiting new shrines is to discover new variations on such things as the shimenawa, statues and carvings etc.

Santoka Taneda

Pricks and pussies
Boiling together
In the overcrowded bath.

This is the most common translation of a poem by Yamaguchi born poet Santoka Taneda. The draincover is in Yuda Onsen, and I am informed that the meaning is read nowadays to mean that both men and women are welcome in Yuda Onsen's spas.

He was a very interesting poet, by all accounts an inveterate drunk who came under the influence of the Free Haiku Movement.

After what was probably a failed suicide attempt he became a monk and then spent the rest of his life wandering Japan, begging, and writing poems a la Basho.

His poetry, like much of Japanese "folk" culture is quite crude and earthy, displaying a very human and natural attitude. Those who prefer the sanitized Victorian/Puritan/Confucian version of japanese culture that prevails today may not like his stuff, but its worth searching out.

Vacation 2010 Day2: along the Coventry Oxford canal

For the second day of my vacation I really lucked out weatherwise. I was out at sunrise under a blanket of fog. My plan was to walk along the Coventry canal until the start of the Oxford Canal and then keep going to see how far I could get.

I've always had good luck with photography along the canals as they offer such perfect reflections.

I was surprised at how much wildlife there is along the canals, ducks especially.

A few miles along at Hawkesbury Junction is the start of the Oxford Canal which winds through the countryside to Oxford, 78 miles away. I plan on eventually walking all the way to Oxford, and then along the Thames to London, and this was my second leg of the journey.

One of the great things about walking the canals is that they are flat.... a pleasant change from Japan where every walk involves climbing. Another great thing is that there are pubs liberally scattered along their length. At 8 a.m. there weren't any open though.

A lot of people live on the canals, and there are a lot of people cruising them for pleasure in rentals.

Adakaya Kojins

The main kami in my area is known as Omoto, and is represented by a straw serpent. Up in Izumo a similar kami goes by the name of Kojin, and it is also represented by a serpent made of rice-straw. In the Higashi izumo area these straw serpents have developed into large sculptural forms. The 2 pictured here are from Adakaya Shrine.

You won't find Kojin in the ancient chronicles as it has nothing to do with the ruling classes or the political Shinto of the shrines. It is a "folk" kami, which simply means it was/is actually worshipped by people. It is a kami that combines elements of ancestor and nature worship.

Though now in the grounds of Adakaya Shrine, these 2 altars would have been moved here during the late Meiji Period when the government closed down half the folk shrines in the country and moved them to state shrines.

The number of gohei in front of the altars, as well as the care and attention that goes into creating these straw serpents attests to the continued importance of Kojin to the local people. The only other place I have seen such large Kojin was on the eastern side of Dogo, the largest of the Oki Islands.

Shimonoseki Kaikyokan

Shimonoseki Kaikyokan is the big, new aquarium located right on the seafront in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture.

It was designed by the Nikken Sekkei Company who also designed our local aquarium, Aquas.

Whereas the design of Aquas was based on the shark form, Kaikyokan is supposedly based on the whale form.

The entrance foyer has a huge whale skeleton on display. (Nearby at the fish market you can by whale steaks)

Many of Japan's whaling fleet are based in Shimonoseki. Ooops... I mean of course Japan's "research" fleet.

By all accounts the aquarium has good displays, but at 1,800yen for entrance, the short time I had as I passed through Shimonoseki meant I didn't go in.

They do have a big display of Fugu.

Vacation 2010 Day1: Coventry.

I took a break from posting recently as I went on vacation.

A lot of friends and family read this blog, so I thought I would post vacation pics here.

My first day was in Coventry, the city I grew up in.

One of the first things I notice when I return to Europe are the trees. They are different from Japan. Older and gnarlier. The streets of European cities tend to have more trees than in japan.

It was really nice to see stone buildings, especially sandstone. This is Swanswell gate in the old town wall dating to the fifteenth Century.

The area around Millenium Square has been redeveloped with a great Transport Museum (free), and more public art. This statue is of Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine.

The skyline in my old neighborhood used to be dominated by the gasworks, but they have long gone and been replaced with Ricoh Stadium, the home of the Coventry FC.

Tachikue Gorge

Tachikue Gorge on the Kando River just south of Izumo City is a great place to spend a quiet couple of hours.

The area is a designated scenic area because of the towering rock formations, many of which have buddhist names as this was a center of Shugendo. All that remains now though is one temple, Reiko-Ji, and 1500 statues along the cliffs and around the giant trees.

There are 2 suspension bridges that cross over to a pleasant footpath. The times I`ve been there I`ve been the only one there. There is a youth hostel in the gorge, but storms a few years ago caused it to close and I don't know if it has opened again. There is also an Onsen on the main road side of the river that has great views of the gorge from its open-air baths.

There are regular buses to Tachikue from outside Izumo-Shi railway station, though the best way to approach it is by walking down the river valley from the mountains :)

More Colourful Koi

Japanese koi come in an astonishing number of breeds.

Here are a few of the major ones.....

KOHAKU.... white with large red markings on top

TAISHO SANSHOKU..... similar to the Kohaku but with the addition of black.

SHOWA SANSHOKU.... black koi with red and white markings/

CHAGOI..... meaqns tea colored... olive green, brown, bronze etc

SHIRO UTSURI... black with white markings

GOLD OGON..... single color, ranging from gold to yellow.

AKA BEKKO.... red with small black markings

BEKKO.... White, with small black markings.

UTSURI MONO..... 2 colred in an almost checkerboard pattern. Several color combinations.

Yomi, The Underworld!

When it comes to where you go after death, the Japanese have had multiple places to believe in. Probably the most common nowadays is the Pure Land of Buddhism, and also the christian notion of heaven has had some influence. Before the introduction of Buddhism there were several places, Ne no Kuni (land of the root), Tokoyo no Kuni, the land of everlasting life that lay across or under the sea, but the classic version is Yomi, the land of the dead.

Yomi is where Izanami went to after giving birth to the kami of fire caused her death. Her partner, Izanagi, was under strict instructions not to follow her, but he did anyway and discovered a place underground filled with rotting corpses. The description of Yomi reads like the inside of a tomb. Anyway, Izanagi was chased by the hideous guardians of Yomi and only managed to escape by blocking the entrance with boulders.

The entrance to Yomi is up in Izumo, not far from Matsue, just off Route 9. One would think that the entrance to hell would be a big deal, but its actually hard to find, marked with a handpainted sign up a small farm road. The farmer who lives next to it doesnt seem at all bothered by it.

A few kilometres away is Kamosu Shrine, and this is where Izanagi stopped and rested after fleeing Yomi. Afterwards he purified himself with water to get rid of the pollution of death, and in the process created Amaterasu and Susano, among others.

Omiwa Shrine

Omiwa Shrine is the major shrine at the base of Mount Miwa in Nara Prefecture. Known as Mount Mimoru in the ancient chronicles, Miwa is generally considered to be where the Yamato established themselves and eventually formed what became the Japanese state.

Much emphasis is placed on Omiwa Shrine not having a honden, the inner sanctuary where the shintai (god-body) of the kami resides, as the mountain itself is considered to be the honden. There are though plenty of other buildings of typical Ryobu shinto design.

The kami is considered to be Okuninushi, the Izumo kam who ceded the land to the Yamato. He took up residence here along with other kami from Izumo to protect Yamato. Not long afterwards Amaterasu was moved to Ise.

Omiwa shrine became marginalized as the center of power moved north, first to Nara and then to Kyoto, and as the courts focus switched to Amaterasu and Ise. However in the middle ages Omiwas declining fortunes were reversed as it was revived by Buddhism. Until the Meiji eras seperation of buddhas and kami (shinbutsu bunri) the area was home to a lot of temples. After shinbutsubunri the temples were mostly destroyed or converted to shrines. There is an excellent paper on this subject The Separation of Gods and Buddhas at Omiwa Shrine

Snakes have been important elements in the mythology surrounding Omiwa shrine and mountain, and the most well-known story concerns a Princess Yamato Totohi Momoso. The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki both give different versions of who she was, but the story is essentially the same. She slept with the Kami of Miwa everynight and asked to see him during the daytime so she could see him in light. He agreed as long as she promised not to freak out. Next morning she saw him in his form of a white snake, and she freaked out. He got angry and disappeared into Mount Miwa and she became so distraught she killed herself by stabbing herself in the genitals with her chopsticks. She was buried in the nearby Hashihaka (chopstick grave) Kofun. Historians tend to believe this is the kofun of Queen Himiko.

Shimenawa & Rock

Rock and stone plays a major part in ancient Japanese mythology, so it's not surprising to find them marked as sacred with a shimenawa.

Iwakura, "stone seat" are rock outcroppings found often on mountaintops and are places where the kami descend to earth. They will often be fenced off behind shimenawa rather than having the shimenawa on them.

As with most other places in the world, rocks with unusual shapes and such will often have stories and legends associated with them. The one above is at a female fertility shrine on Mount Daisen, and its easy to see what it reopresents.

This rock has Sainokami carved in it. sainokami are male/female kami found in pairs at village boundaries, crossroads, etc. originally represented by a male and female rock, later they began to be carved as figures.

And, of course, there are lots of memorial stones that will have shimenawa on them.

I'm looking forward to reading a book I just got on the new discipline of Geomythology, the study of the geological foundation to human myths.

Concrete Wabi Sabi Mountainsides

Concrete Wabi Sabi: Mountainsides

Any look at the aesthetics, or economics, of concrete in Japan would have to look at concreted mountainsides.

There is no doubting that Japanese mountainsides are, by and large, steep. That comes partially from Japan's "newness" geologically speaking, and that steepness causes problems that can be remedies by concrete.

But whether the truly staggering amounts of concreted mountainsides in Japan are truly necessary.... thats another thing.

Like many of the roads, bridges, tunnels, and tetrapods, their function is more to provide profits for concrete and construction companies. And jobs of course.