ガイ・ララミー作： 広辞苑からできた龍安寺
Guy LARAMIE: Carving of the famous Zen rock garden Ryōanji in the pages of the Kōjien (Japanese dictionary)
There are more of Laramie’s book carvings at Visualnews and the artist’s own webpage.
Meiji Period architecture on Sanjo, Kyoto
三条の明治期の建築、京都
The Meiji period (1868-1912) was a time of cultural borrowing and adaptation, as Japan modified elements of foreign culture in ways that would benefit the new, modern empire Japan was seeking to become. This is evident everywhere in Meiji culture, including its architecture. Here are some photographs that I recently took in Kyoto of Meiji period architecture lining Sanjo, one of the east-west boulevards that runs through the center of town.
Many of these buildings are now cute shops and interesting places for tourists. The big brick building that starts off this slide show is now a museum, the Museum of Kyoto 京都文化博物館, which shows revolving displays of art and has a large permanent display about the history of Kyoto.
The city of Kyoto is moving forward with plans to destroy part of Umenokoji Park and build an aquarium inside the city. Some international residents of Kyoto who oppose the project have started an online petition to gather international attention to the issue. Please consider adding your name to the petition.
Click here to go the petition to stop the aquarium.
Click here to go to the blog Deep Kyoto for more information.
Click here for some more information in Japanese about the aquarium project.
Why object to an aquarium in Kyoto?
- The loss of public green space. Apart from the temples and other historical institutions, there is relatively little public park space in the city of Kyoto.
- It is not suitable for Kyoto. Kyoto is an inland city with no maritime associations.
- The plan is a poor use of city and environmental resources, especially considering that there are bigger and better aquariums in nearby cities, such as Osaka.
- The decision was made behind closed doors between the city administration and private business. This is public land but public opinion has been ignored.
Okuribi, Kyoto 送り火、京都 (2010)
Jeffrey ANGLES
The O-bon お盆 Festival takes in Japan place each year over the course of several days in the summer. In traditional times, it was that the would dead come back during this season to visit their families. At the end of the festival, many places throughout Japan would light fires called “okuribi” 送り火 or would place burning lanterns in the rivers to help guide their relatives to the next world.
There are five places surrounding the city of Kyoto which have gigantic kanji characters or images incised in the hillsides, and tonight, at the end of the O-bon festival, the caretakes lit fires in each of them, creating okuribi to send home the spirits of the deceased. This tradition has continued for centuries.
These pictures show two of the characters, as well as the people gathered to see them. One of the characters is the Daimonji 大文字， the enormous characters meaning “great” or “big” (大) located on a hillside in northeastern Kyoto. Exactly ten minutes after lighting the character, the people on a neighboring mountain lit the fires to spell out the character for “dharma” or “Buddhist law” (法).
As the fires sputtered and came to life on the dark hillsides, there was an otherworldly, ethereal beauty about them, as if these images were bursting into this world from some other, far-away dimension. They burned for about thirty minutes each, before slowly fading away, returning to the darkness for yet another year.
About two weeks ago, my friend Jason Weidemann from Minnesota and I went to 長楽寺 Chōraku-ji, a rustic, run-down temple nestled in the eastern hills 東山 of eastern Kyoto. Although it is within easy walking distance of Maruyama Park 丸山公演 and the mausoleum of Shinran 親鸞, it is set back a bit further than the others.
With view visitors and little income, it is quite run down, and has an air as if the world has utterly forgotten about it. There is a modern, newly built treasure house with some stunning statues from the Kamakura period, but otherwise, the place feels as if time is standing still. Here is the description from Jason’s blog.
Perched on a mountainside, a bit of a hike beyond the main sites of Eastern Kyoto, Choraku-ji appears to have been taken over by spiders. The drowsy old monk at the gate seems not up to the task of pruning back the bushes and pulling down the webs from their privileged positions under the shafts of light that make it through the canopies above.
The room of artifacts smells of the 60s. Few visitors have come through to disturb the air and view the scrolls. The spiders might just take over this space as well; they drop down from the sunwells and march slowly up from the pond.
Here is where Kenreimon-in was sent after the defeat of her clan in 1185 by the Genji. The story of how she came to this place is told in many tales, including The Tale of the Heike. It is also referenced in Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In “The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi,” Hearn writes, “More than seven hundred years ago, at Dan-no-ura, in the Straits of Shimonoseki, was fought the last battle of the long contest between the Heiki, or Taira clan, and the Genji, or Minamoto clan. There the Heiki perished utterly, with their women and children, and their infant emperor likewise—now remembered as Antoku Tenno. And that sea and shore have been haunted for seven hundred years…”
Kenreimon-in, knowing defeat was imminent, and despairing, took her child-emperor son in her arms and threw herself into the sea. He drowned, and the clan was lost, but she was fished out from amidst the flotsam of her destroyed clan, scattered upon the water, a shell of herself. She was sent here, where the scroll depicting her likeness was purposefully defaced, less representatives of the Genji clan came by the to finish the job of erasing her from the future.
In a mass for the drowned, eight year old emperor, she sewed flags from the robes the boy was wearing when he drowned…these flags, and the defaced portrait, sit in the dusty temple, guarded by spiders.
Behind the temple, an ice cold stream of water falls into a bamboo bucket. Small stone statues of the Buddha constantly wipe water and moss from their eyes. The water, which pounds down on your flesh like all of your regrets, nonetheless tastes exceptionally good, and is known for its restorative qualities…
