| Submitted by: Mark Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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Supposedly the largest Torii gates in the world are in Tokyo but this must be pretty close in size and is a bright orange-red to boot. This is the Torii gate of the Heian-Jingu shrine, dedicated to founder of Kyoto, Emperor Kanmu (or Kammu), and built in 1895. Yes this bright orange shrine is fairly recent as these things go. Kamnu chose the site for the city, called it Heian-Kyo and immediately had a Buddhist monk, Seicho, build a temple to protect the city from evil spirits. He built the temple on Mt. Hiei. It grew into a whole temple complex with its own army. In 1571 Nobunaga invaded angry of the monks interference in politics. He said of the monks 'If I do not take them away now this trouble will go on forever. These priests break their vows, eat fish and stinking vegetables, keep concubines and never even open the sacred books. How can they fight evil and do what is right? Surround their dens, burn them down, and let none of them be left alive.' He burned down every temple and executed every monk. It was eventually rebuilt, but not till the 1700s and it never returned to the power it once had.
This is where the Jidai Matsuri parade of a couple days before ends up. Evelyn had wanted to get a program of that festival parade and I suggested she look here. Indeed they had the program.
The shrine was majestic but at only 101 years of age, it really was just barely historical. They had two nice fountains, one with a panther sculpture, the other with a dragon.
Leaving we bought a gift for one of our godchildren, then bought from a machine some really good ice cream for 100 yen.
We had gifts to get and tried the Kyoto Handicrafts Center. Every floor somebody greeted you as you entered. We started on the sixth floor of a seven floor building and found first that there was very little that you or I would call handicrafts. It was all priced considerably higher than I would have expected. (A machine produced replica of two samurai swords in a rack cost $120, on sale from $140). Even some of the ornamentation was plastic. The service was great, very attentive, which led me to believe that this was a really high-profit center. The place was supposedly full of handicrafts and on one of the floors they had three little craftsmen working on goods. Just how stupid do they think we are? Do they think Americans don't know the difference between factory goods and handicrafts? Generally the Japanese are pretty honest and I guess this place is not really dishonest by mixing factory goods with handicrafts, but it is certainly a misrepresentation. My recommendation, you will find better quality at lower prices in the department stores with sales people as friendly and helpful. Don't go to a tourist trap. If you go to a place that caters to foreigners, be it a restaurant or a store, you will pay for the catering. You may save a bit of time, but you will lose in every other regard.
We left without buying anything and headed to Kawaramachi Street. It is still unusual to be walking on a sidewalk, hear a bicycle bell behind you, and see that it is a man in his 70s pedaling past. We stopped at an arcade shopped and found even here the prices were better than the handicrafts store. It is strange that souvenirs are sold with images from Coffee Boss, but since they don't have the rights to reproduce the label, they have some fun and take some liberties. One has the boss look much the same but be a woman. We stop and have our usual lunch, noodles. Evelyn has ramen with pork, I have soba with several interesting things including an egg and some tempura. We see a full Buddhist temple in the middle of an arcade. Weird uses of English continue. We see restaurant called Mr. Young Men.
We finally get to Takashimaya and do some shopping there. Afterwards we go to the basement and pick up sushi. They have the best selection we have seen in Kyoto though they are not up to Tobu in Tokyo. There is a constant mob around the sushi in feeding frenzy.
We take the bus back to the area we are staying in and work on our logs in the room. There is a quiz show on television that seems to have the participants in amusement park rides. If they lose they get dropped in a free-fall ride, that sort of thing. At 8 PM there is a samurai drama on and we eat dinner and watch the drama. In some ways they do not play fair. One character wears a mask to look like another. The mask looks like something that is applied to the face and was not a technology that was around 20 years ago, much less in the time of the samurai. These samurai dramas are a common staple of Japanese TV the way that Westerns used to be of ours. They are in Japanese, of course, but the action scenes need no subtitles. And they do have a nice period feel. In the US, samurai films are considered semi-art films. People go into New York to see them in special showings at the Japan Society. The Japanese take them more as day-to-day mass entertainment. It is a lot like sushi, treated matter-of-factly in Japan, considered special in the US. Samurai stories run on TV and are little better or worse than our GUNSMOKE. In fact the samurai films were much influenced by American Western TV shows.
It strikes me as odd that so few Japanese speak English very well. With all the Englishisms mixed into their language, still most Japanese dealing with Americans have real problems speaking English. More Croatians seem to speak English reasonably well than Japanese do. Evelyn went to sleep early and I have put Madame Butterfly on the cassette player and I am working on the log.
Our trip is fast winding down. I now have all the rest of my film in my photovest. I may run just a little bit short. I used to get depressed at the end of a trip that I would have to go back to work. I guess I am getting older and trips like this are pretty exhausting. Also these days I am enjoying my works a lot more. I want to get back to it. Evelyn seems to be more exhausted than I am. We come dragging back at the end of a day and just flop down.
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10/25/96 Kyoto: A Temple Too Far
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Last night I went to sleep listening to POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE on the radio. It is picking up a TV frequency and that was being broadcast in English with Japanese subtitles. I have yet to actually see a program broadcast in English, but they obviously have them. The morning music program is again Gregorian Chants. it must come on about 6 AM. I woke at 5 and tried to get them, listening with an earphone. There was only one station on at that hour and the music was not to my liking. I guess it was like our top 40 stations.
We were out at about 8:30 having had a small breakfast on the remaining piece of cake from the bakery two days ago.
We got off the bus and I had a steamed bun to balance my breakfast. I also bought some snacks for the room. I got some sugar-coated peanuts and a dried squid packaged as snack food. I shall miss steamed buns when I am drinking Ultra-Slimfast next Monday morning.
We pass a drinking place called Bath Room. The sign also bears the name Sopporo Beer. I guess Sopporo Beer ends up in the bath room anyway you look at it.
Ginkakuji Temple means Silver Pavilion. Kinkakuji Temple, which we visited already means Golden Pavilion and this was sort of a copy. OK, time for a bit of a history lesson.
We have discussed here how Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu unified Japan. The reason it needed unifying is that it was in a heck of a mess before then. The Ashikaga family had tried to rule, but they were not really the right people to rule Japan and the country ended up in civil war and chaos. No small amount of this chaos was added by the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa. As Shogun he was a complete washout. Basically he said, 'I need a successor and have no son. Just as a formality I'm going to name my younger brother Yoshimi as the next Shogun. But you know, I always wanted a son to rule after me. So me and the wifey are gonna keep trying.' Can you guess what happened?
Yoshimasa had no heir, so he named his brother as the shogun to replace him. Then he had a son the following year. Now his wife (a real Lady Macbeth type--and there are lots in Japanese history) wanted the son to be Shogun. She went to influential daimyo Yamana Souzen for help, but Yoshimasa's brother had powerful backers also including eventually Katsumoto Hosokawa who with Yamana Souzen made this one of the issues of the Onin War. (Remember Katsumoto? He was the guy with the Zen rock garden who loved peace and hated Souzen. Well, he took sides supporting Yoshimasa's brother Yoshimi. This is probably because Souzen supported the son. Souzen and Katsumoto made sure never to agree on any issue of substance. It is sort of like the US and the USSR during the Cold War.) Going to Souzen created more mess and it was all about a little family disagreement. I guess when you rule a country your worst enemies are your closest relatives. This was just one of several issues that divided the country and civil war raged. Yoshimasa responded to the mess he had created by retreating to the outskirts of Kyoto in 1482 and building himself a nice house where he lived in a separate peace while all around was war. The house was the Silver Pavilion, a sort of me-too to the Golden Pavilion built 85 years earlier by his grandfather. He had intended it to be covered in silver leaf, but it never was. He devoted himself to aesthetics, art, staying out of mischief, and Zen--becoming a Zen monk. When he died the Silver Pavilion became a temple. Well that's the way it is with these fancy houses. First they become temples, then they burn down.
The Silver Pavilion looks a lot like the Golden Pavilion, but without the fancy wrapper. Also it is only two stories. Supposedly there are 1000 statues of Jizo, guardian of children downstairs. He probably needs them since he made his own child the focus of a civil war. Following the path around takes you up a hill where you get a nice view not only of the whole temple grounds but of the Kyoto Valley.
Any of these sites we go to are mobbed with children and they frequently say 'hello' to show they know some English. You really can respond in one of three ways. You can respond in Japanese with proper greeting for the time of day, you can respond in English saying 'hello' back, or you can give them a hearty 'Three dogs west upside-orange.' The latter gets some of the most quizzical looks. Of course a week later you will see it on a sweatshirt.
On our way in I found a Kabuki mask for a reasonable price and got it as a souvenir. Leaving I got a little Daruma. It had both eyes painted in already, but that is fine. It is a Japanese custom that when you start an enterprise like a new store, you buy a Daruma and paint in one eye. Then you wait to see if your enterprise is a success. When it is you paint in the other eye. This way you have Daruma, an important Buddhist icon, pulling for you to be a success. Most of the souvenir shops seem to have as much food as objects. They will have gift boxes of little filled cakes and cookies. Evelyn suggest that the reason may be that space is really at a premium in Japan. A food gift does not take up valuable permanent space. It gets eaten and it is gone. It would make sense. Japan is really a country that is very tight on space. Space may well be their most valuable commodity. Putting a lot of space in a building is like giving it solid gold fittings.
Next we took the Walk of Philosophers. This is a walk along the canal. It is a very pleasant walk under low-hanging cherry trees. As we walked two old women saw us came up to us talking to us in Japanese and started doing what appeared to be a blessing. It took about 90 seconds but they blessed us. I was expecting some sort of request for payment, but that never happened. They just blessed us and thanked us and we thanked them and we each went our way. |
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