Yasui Konpira-gu is a rather small a shrine in Gion and large buildings encroach it on all sides. However small, it is very famous among people from Kyoto and elsewhere. Until recently, it had an ema museum, ema being wooden tablets on which worshippers write their wishes to the gods. Unfortunately, the building where the museum was located is very old and has been considered unsafe, so the museum is closed for the time being.
However nice the museum might have been, it was never the main attraction of Yasui Konpira-gu. That title goes to the enkiri / enmusubi ishi, a large stone (purportedly in the shape of an ema, but it’s hard to tell, really) with a round hole at its base. This stone is said to help break off bad, unhealthy relationships and form new, better ones instead.
The procedure is simple: First you buy a slip of paper and write your wish on it. Then you position yourself at the stone and crawl through the hole. Going front to back means to break off a relationship. Going back to front expresses a wish for a new one. Many people do both; obviously you’ll have to end a relationship before you can start a new one (at least, that’s the clean way to go about it). Finally, you glue the paper to the stone and hope that your wishes will be granted.
By the way: this does not only work for romantic relationships, although most people probably visit the shrine for this reason. A friend of mine told me that some of the papers glued to the stone read like lines from a soap opera. “I want his wife to die” is probably one of the stronger requests. But many people come to break addictions to drugs or gambling, others want to find a more satisfying job, and cutting the “relationship” with an illness for oneself or a close person are very common wishes too… The possibilities are endless!
Time for another recipe! And this time, I am so proud: I have learnt how to make katsudon! Katsudon is short for tonkatsu donburi, which essentially is a tonkatsu pork cutlet on top of a bowl of rice. It is easy and quick to make, a kind of Japanese comfort food if you want so.
Bonus for Austrians: Tonkatsu is essentially a very thick Wienerschnitzel, so if you ever have leftover Schnitzels, this is what you can do with it on the next day (if you’re not just making a Schnitzelsemmel, of course).
Recipe for Katsudon (1 person)
– 1 bowl of boiled rice, preferably white
– 1 small onion – a tablespoon of cooking oil Cut the onion in half and then in slices. Put the oil into the pan and gently fry the onions.
– 1 tonkatsu (or Schnitzel) fresh or left over, cut in strips Add to the pan and let it reheat.
– about 100 ml dashi or any kind of soup – 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon cooking sake (* optional, but it adds to the flavour if the soup doesn’t have much.) Add the soup and soy sauce to the pan. The soup should not cover the meat, so you should flip the meat over at some point.
– 1 large egg Mix the eggs just until the yolks are broken up. Pour them over the meat with the soup and let it set. Ideally, you let the egg cook until it is still a bit slimy, the hot rice in the bowl will do the rest.
Put the rice into a bowl and let the mixture slowly slide out of the pan on top of it. Ideally, the egg is still intact on the rice. (That never happens for me, though.) Garnish with spring onions, chives, or pieces of nori seaweed.
It is almost time for the highlight of this year’s Gion Matsuri – the main saki parade will be on July 17. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow night are the yoiyama, the nights preceding the festival which means essentially a huge party in the inner city of Kyoto. Not only are people celebrating summer, they also visit the floats that will be shown in the parade on Tuesday to buy souvenirs.
And one of those souvenirs are chimaki. “Souvenir” is actually not correct, chimaki are protective charms made from bamboo leaves. People put them up at the entrance of their homes or businesses to ward off evil and to prevent sickness. But only for one year – you’ll have to buy a new one at the next Gion Matsuri!
Traditionally, chimaki were thrown from the large hoko floats into the gathered crowds, but nowadays, they are sold during the days (and nights) of the yoiyama. Every float has their own chimaki, with slightly different properties, but the chimaki of the Naginata hoko, which always leads the saki parade, is considered the most powerful and thus extremely popular among the locals.
The story behind the chimaki is ancient and it goes like this: A long, long time ago, the god Susanoo (the brother of the sun goddess) was travelling in disguise through Japan. One evening, he looked for shelter, but was refused entry to all of the wealthy houses of the town. But when he knocked at poor Somin Shorai’s home, he was welcomed and treated with great respect. When Susanoo left the next day, he gave Somin Shorai a bundle of cogon grass to wear at his waist for protection, which was the origin of today’s chimaki. (*) To this day, some chimaki have an extra red strip of paper attached saying “I am a descendant of Somin Shorai”, which is believed to offer extra protection against evil.
(*) Other versions of the story say he received a small wreath of miscanthus reeds, the origin of today’s chinowa wreath, which is used in the Nagoshi no Harae summer purification.
It seems that these kind of chimaki are a speciality of Kyoto or Gion Matsuri in particular. This may be because Susanoo is the main god enshrined at Yasaka Shrine, for which Gion Matsuri is held. When researching this topic, most of the websites about chimaki pointed to a type of sweet rice dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaves, that are eaten at Boy’s Day in May. But that’s a topic for another weekend post.
PS: I cannot for the heck of it find the photos of my own chimaki at the moment. It’s too late to take new ones, so I’ll add them tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!
Umenomiya Taisha is a rather small shrine with a very large garden tucked away in a residential area in Arashiyama. It was founded about 1300 years ago by Agata Inukai no Michiyo (or Tachibana Michiyo) as a shrine for her ancestors, in a little place in the rural parts of Kyoto prefecture. With the rise of the Tachibana family into imperial ranks, the shrine was moved twice before it was relocated to Kyoto around the year 800 to the place where it still stands today.
Umenomiya Taisha enshrines the mountain god Oyamazumi-no-kami and his daughter Konohana-no-sakuyahime, the goddess of life. Legend says, that Oyamazumi-no-kami was so pleased when his daughter gave birth to his first grandson, that he invented sake to celebrate the occasion. Furthermore, it is said that her delivery took place one day after her marriage, and it was a quick and easy one. For these reasons, the shrine is still popular with sake brewers and couples hoping for children.
The main entrance of the shrine is through the red torii and the two storey Romon gate in the south. The two zuishin warriors placed inside the gate are rather common; the special feature are the rows of sake barrels stacked on the second floor.
Directly behind the Romon gate lies the haiden dance stage. Just like the gate, it was rebuilt in 1828 and is a Kyoto prefecture registered cultural property. To the right of the Romon gate, there is a large and interesting pine tree whose stem has been twisted around itself by the gardeners. I don’t know how old it is, but it does look very impressive.
The honden prayer hall at the very north dates from 1700 and is the oldest building of the shrine, with a beautiful cypress-bark roof. Beyond the honden, surrounded by ancient trees, lies the actual sanctuaries of the gods. Also back there, and not generally accessible, lie the Matage-ishi stones, that come with the following legend: Empress Danrin, who had moved the shrine to Kyoto, had difficulties conceiving until she came to Umenomiya Taisha and stepped over the stones, upon which she was immediately blessed with a son. The story goes further that she took sand from the shrine and spread it under her bed, aiding in an easy delivery. To this day, many couples who want children come to the shrine to perform the Matage-ishi ceremony, and some of the shrine’s omamori talismans allegedly contain sand surrounding the Matage-ishi stones.
Umenomiya Taisha has a large garden that can be entered through the Higashi Mon, the eastern gate. It looks less perfectly laid out as some of the other shrine gardens, but the slightly unkempt appearance has a lovely charm to it that is worth experiencing. The so-called Shin-en gardens contain two ponds: Directly behind the gate, in the east gardens, lies Sakuya Ike, where different types of Iris and lotus greet the visitors. Inside the pond, that is teeming with colourful carp, is an island with the little tea house Ikenaka-tei, built in 1852 by wealthy Minamoto-no-Morokata who lived in the area.
Further along the path, in the north garden, lies Magatama Ike. It has the shape of a comma, resembling the ancient magatama jewels made from jade. Again, it is filled with Iris and lotus flowers, and surrounded by plum and cherry trees. There is no prominent pond in the west garden, but instead, there are many little paths among colourful hydrangea bushes and peaceful trees.
The best time to visit the gardens is in the first half of the year, where different flowers mark the passage of time, starting with plums and cherries, iris and lotus flowers and azaleas and hydrangeas. Spring is especially lovely when the 500 plum trees of 40 varieties in different colors from bright white to dark crimson are in bloom. Although less interesting in summer and autumn, the west garden has many hidden paths with quiet benches, where you can sit in the shade and enjoy the solitude.
Umenomiya Taisha is a hidden gem worth visiting for all those who like to venture off the beaten tracks. It should also be on the list for cat lovers since the family of the shrine’s priest is taking care of a large colony of very photogenic cats. They seem to be very popular with even renowned photographers, and there are postcards of the cats for sale at the shrine. Yet more unconventional shrine souvenirs are umeboshi, pickled plums, made from the very plums that grow in the gardens, or a bottle of sake that is specially made for the shrine – although probably not by the gods any more.
Sorry for not posting last Tuesday. After being out all day, I came home with a bad headache, took two aspirin and went straight to bed. Instead of waking up an hour or so later as I had hoped, I slept until Wednesday morning…
So, I have to tell my Tuesday story today: I met one of my English students then and we started to talk about the big companies that have their headquarters in Kyoto instead of in Tokyo. Among them are Wacoal (women’s underwear), ROHM (semiconductors), Kyocera (printers, phones, solar cells) and, probably most famous world-wide: Nintendo. We got to talk about the early history of Nintendo, something most people don’t know about, and my student asked me to share the information – and I’m happy to do this today.
Nintendo is a very old company, founded in 1889 in Kyoto. The name’s Kanji can be translated as “leave luck to heaven”. At first, the company produced handmade hanafuda playing cards, which were quite popular because of their simple design. However, those cards were almost always used for gambling, something the government tried to restrict, especially from the Meiji period. One way out of this was to produce different sets of cards every time one particular game became illegal. However, in 1959, Nintendo had a brilliant idea: They made a deal with the Disney company, allowing them to use Disney designs on their playing cards. In this way, the cards could be marketed to families with children – and in one year, more than 600.000 packs were sold.
Eventually, from 1966, when the market for playing cards was saturated, Nintendo became a toy company, and in the early 1970s, Nintendo started to produce electronic games. The rest is history. 😉
I did not know about the early beginnings of Nintendo, but I will look more into the hanafuda playing cards and the (illegal) games one would play with those. I love learning something new!
In a single night, a tiny, unnamed island of Japan sinks into the ocean and disappears forever. Nearby, long dormant volcanoes erupt again, one by one, And an inspection of the ocean’s floor at a depth of some 10.000 metres discovers signs of strange, almost inexplicable phenomena. Only Prof. Tadokoro has an idea of what’s going on: Japan – every last one of its islands – will sink into the ocean, destroyed by the same force that once has created it by splitting it off Asia. When evidence mounts that Day X is not more than two years away, there begins a frantic struggle of scientists and the government to make sure the nation of Japan and its people have some way of surviving.
This book does not dwell on the disastrous effects of almost constant earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on the Japanese citizens, but a sense of terror and urgency is conveyed throughout. We follow a few scientists and politicians in producing evacuation plans, fully understanding that the death toll will rise to the hundreds of thousands, regardless. Another touching scene is a secret meeting with the Australian prime minister, who is presented with a priceless, 800 year old artifact while being asked to consider accepting one million Japanese refugees. “Our shrines and temples are full of such statues”, says the negotiator.
Even though the book was written back in 1973, it does not show its age. Written in a realistic manner without sensationalist effects, it brings up a number of timeless, interesting questions: What is a “nation” and how important is the actual land on which it was founded? What are the indispensable parts of a culture and how many – and which – artifacts should you try to save facing certain destruction? And how many people are required in one spot to make sure said culture is not doomed altogether?
Sakyo Komatsu (1931 – 2011) was a Japanese screenwriter and considered one of the Japanese masters of science fiction. Born in Osaka, he studied Italian literature at Kyoto University and worked at a number of different jobs afterwards. His career as fiction writer started in 1960, and he published Japan Sinks in 1973 after nine years of writing. The book received the Mystery Writers of Japan Award and the Seiun Award, and was subsequently turned into a movie and a television series.
A wonderful and timeless book, available on amazon.
The Eight Views of Omi is a series of woodblock prints from the Edo Period, depicting scenes from places around Lake Biwa. The Biwako is the largest sweet water lake in Japan, its southernmost tip is only some 20 minutes east of Kyoto. Historically, the province in which Lake Biwa is located was called Omi, and many little towns around the lake still have Omi as part of their name.
The idea of the Eight Views goes back to China, in particular to the 11th century paintings Eight Views of Xiaoxiang. Eight Views were considered the most beautiful or significant scenes of an area, and since many artists made images like that, these can be seen as an early version of visual advertisements. The idea came to Japan in the 15th century and inspired prince Konoe Masaie and his son Naomichi to a series of poems about eight scenic places on nearby Biwako. In the early 18th century, woodblock printer Nishimura Shigenaga took Konoe’s poetry and turned it back into images, his Eight Views thus becoming one of the first series of landscapes made in Japanese woodblock printing art.
From there on, many different artists took up the theme and produced at least one series of Eight Views of Omi. However, the most prolific of all artists was Hiroshige, who made at least 20 different series over a number of years. The topic was popular until well into the 20th century, when the modern shin-hanga style of woodblock printing evolved from the old ukiyo-e. For example, Ito Shinsui produced a series of Eight Views of Omi as late as 1917. Note that there is also a series of images called The Eight Views of Lake Biwa, however, this refers to a modern version with some different locations created in 1949 by the government of Shiga Prefecture (the modern name of the area around Lake Biwa).
The Eight Views of Omi are usually called by the following titles:
Returning Sails at Yabase Yabase is a former harbour on the east side of Biwako. Situated near the Tokaido (the main road between Kyoto and Edo), people could use boats to go down to Otsu, thus speeding their journey. Yabase harbour was abandoned when the first railway between Tokyo and Kyoto was opened. (Harunobu, ca. 1760)
Evening Rain at Karasaki Karasaki is but a small cape reaching into the lake, with a single large pine tree. The enormous tree has been replaced a number of times, the current one was planted in the 20th century. (Ryuryukyo Shinsai, ca. 1820)
Evening Bell at Miidera Founded in the 8th century, Miidera temple is home to one of the three great bells of Japan, with a height of more than 3 metres. (Hiroshige, 1852)
Wild Geese Returning Home at Katata Rather than geese, the recurring image is that of Ukimido Temple, which stands on piles in the lake and is accessible by a bridge. (Nishimura Shigenaga, ca. 1730)
Clear Breeze at Awazu Awazu is famous for its pine forest. On some old prints the castle of Zeze can still be seen, however, it was dismantled in the early Meiji period.
Autumn Moon at Ishiyama Ishiyama Temple is located a bit south of Biwako and was built into a steep slope, somewhat reminiscent of Kyoto’s Kiyomizudera Temple (Ito Shinsui, 1917)
Evening Glow at Seta These images usually show the great bridge crossing the Seta river, which was once part of the Tokaido. The modern bridge is made from concrete, but its original Chinese style has been kept. (Hiroshige,1835)
Evening Snow at Hira Mount Hira on the west side of Biwako is the highest mountain of the chain and in winter is always tipped with snow. (Hokusai, 1802)
The Eight Views of Omi were very popular, and many artists have taken the concept and transplanted it to other regions of Japan in what the Japanese call mitate. For example, there are Eight Views of Kanazawa, Samani, near Edo… Many of those prints copied the underlying ideas of the original images, like “evening glow” or “clear breeze” and transported them to suitable other locations. Yet other artists have taken the theme a bit further and produced Eight Views that parody the original, for example the Eight Views of Beautiful Shields by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, showing samurai, or his Eight Views of Wise Women. Isoda Koryusai produced Eight Elegant Views of Fukugawa, depicting beautiful women. In 1927, a set of modern Eight Views were introduced, showcasing scenic landscapes from all over Japan.
Izumi Miyazaki, born 1994 in Yamanashi Prefecture, is a Japanese photographer. Her works are colorful self portraits amongst every day items – all with a surreal twist.
copyright: Izumi Miyazaki
She started with photography in a highschool photo club, and later went to Musashino Art University in Tokyo, graduating with a major in Imaging Arts in 2016. Already during her student days, she took surreal pictures and posted them online on Tumblr, where she was almost an instant hit. Her first solo show Cute & Cruel, was in Luxembourg 2016, her first solo show in Japan followed (stand-in, in Tokyo, 2016). She was also invited to participate in the group show Give Me Yesterday (Milan, 2016–17), and her work is one of 40 photographers featured in the book Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze by Charlotte Jansen.
copyright: Izumi Miyazaki
As Izumi Miyazaki says in an interview with CNN Style, she never liked to be catalogued or categorized, and doesn’t mind to be on her own. Her work is carefully crafted and designed, but even though she is the only model in her photos, she feels as if that person were somebody else. Again, when asked for her style, she says that she doesn’t really have one, only tries to work inthe moment. However, she hopes that the viewers approach her photos with an open mind.
Although most Japanese nowadays write with ballpoint pens or, worse, type their thoughts into their smartphones with a single finger, traditional brush calligraphy is still held in high esteem. All kids in Japan learn calligraphy in elementary school where it is seen not only as a way to study proper hiragana/katakana and kanji themselves, on top of producing nice handwriting, but also as a means to teach patience and diligence and to build character. Many people in Japan believe that a fine piece of calligraphy always reveals the character of the writer.
Like many other traditions in Japan, calligraphy or shodo – the way of writing – came to the country from China, where the first pictograms were invented around 2800 BCE. The Chinese script was introduced to Japan around 600 CE together with Buddhism, and the first application of calligraphy was the copying of Buddhist sutras in temples. Some 200 years later, in the Heian period, writing had been introduced to the court and its bureaucrats, and a distinctive Japanese style of calligraphy began to develop, culminating in the hiragana script.
The hiragana script was invented as a kind of shorthand for the kanji, but over time, many of the hiragana were dropped and the script turned into a syllabary. For a long time, hiragana were considered the women’s script – in fact, women were even expressly forbidden to study kanji – but eventually, hiragana became widely accepted, and their combination with kanji created the typical Japanese writing system known today.
Shodo is a relatively cheap hobby to start. As a beginner, you need a brush, paper, paperweight, and ink. Many beginners start out with bottles of liquid ink, but the more serious students will not get around buying ink stick and stone to grind their own ink. Practice paper can be cheap newsprint, but more elaborate works that are meant for keeping do call for Japanese washi paper, and at that stage, a personal seal to sign – or rather: stamp – the piece will be necessary. Many calligraphers carve their own seals in special seal script characters, by the way.
8 strokes of “eternity” taken from www.japanvisitor.com
When learning to write kanji with a brush, the kanji for “eternity” is probably the best starting point, since its eight tenkaku strokes are all the different strokes that there are to master. Technically, that is. Students first start out with what is called kaisho or regular script, which has clear aesthetic rules – for example, each character should be as square-shaped as possible. Some of these rules go back to Wang Xizhi, a 4th century Chinese scholar whose calligraphy was seen as an aesthetic benchmark in both China and Japan for a long time. Kaisho most resembles the kanji printed in newspapers and books.
The next step for the learner is gyosho or semi-cursive script, which resembles handwriting and works with a number of simplifications and abbreviations, so to speak. The last step is sosho or cursive, where the easy flow of the brush is paramount. It is very individual, and closer to art than to legible writing. Many people cannot read texts written in sosho they are not familiar with.
Not only the way each stroke is written is important, also the order in which this is done. Some people insist that only kanji that were written in the correct stroke order possess aesthetic merit and are pleasing to the eye.
Since shodo is a rather cheap hobby, many people in Japan practise it. It is a form of applied art deeply connected with Japanese spirit and culture. As already elementary school children learn the basics, they can take part in the popular kakizome ceremony, where people of all ages write down their wishes for the New Year. This often takes place in temples or shrines, for example in Kyoto, Kitano Tenmangu is very popular for kakizome. The best pieces of calligraphy are exhibited afterwards and may even win a prize. Also connected to the New Year are the nengajo postcards. Although nowadays, many of them are simply printed out, especially older people still write and address them by hand, thus showing off their penmanship.
Zen calligraphy is a special form of calligraphy practised by Buddhist monks in particular. Since black ink on white paper is rather unforgiving and shows every mistake and even hesitation, the idea is that there is but one chance to get it right on a particular piece of paper. In order to produce good Zen calligraphy, the writer must completely clear his mind and let his body and subconscious do the work. This spiritual state of mind is called mushi, and hitsuzendo means “zen way of the brush”.
Flower by Nakajima Hiroyuki.
Finally, calligraphy also stands at the beginning of each tea ceremony: The guests are invited to look at a piece of calligraphy before the ceremony begins (also as a way to clear their minds) and often, there is also a calligraphy placed in the tokonoma alcove of the tea room.
Modern Japanese calligraphy was developed in the 1930s, when many new schools of calligraphy emerged that advocated creating a new, distinct style of Japanese calligraphy, rather than adhering to old, pre-Edo aesthetics. There are stunning modern pieces that are more reminiscent of paintings than of writing, and are definitely worth checking out.
If you want to know more, especially about calligraphy history, see this page on Japanese calligraphy.
Kogito Choko, renowned Japanese writer with dozens of literary awards to his name (including the Nobel Prize) is suffering from writer’s block. Suddenly his sister calls, offering him access to an old red trunk that is known to hold documents and letters of their father, who drowned when Kogito was a small boy. Excited to finally be able to finish the “Drowning Novel” about his father that he had begun decades earlier (to the dismay of his mother), Kogito decides to visit their old family home in Shikoku and to write what he believes will be his final novel – and his masterpiece.
This is only the second book I read by Oe, famed Japanese Nobel prize winner, and I am not sure what to make of it. The disappointment starts when the red trunk turns out to be devoid of anything useful – his mother had destroyed every important letter before her own death. Then, there are seemingly endless stretches of conversations with or about the members of a theatre group that was planning to stage all of Choko’s novels, culminating in the last one, an endeavour which, obviously, isn’t going anywhere either. Only at the end, with the reappearance of an old family friend, does the novel gain some traction, but there was a lot of paper until then…
There is an interesting line in the book where the author’s mother accuses him of not having any fantasy, only imagination, which is supposedly always based in reality. And the book does feel very autobiographical, but many other things are unrealistic: Would you leave your house to a woman whom you barely know, instead of to any of your own children? Anyway, while I didn’t particularly like this book, I am still curious about the author, and I will see if I can read more of his novels.
Kenzaburo Oe was born in 1935 in Shikoku, and started to study French literature when he was 19. His first stories were published in 1957, heavily influenced by contemporary French and American literature. Oe has been political from his early beginnings as a writer, for example, he has written about Hiroshima’s a-bomb victims, the atrocities of the Japanese military on Okinawa; currently he is very active in the anti-nuclear movement in Japan. His first literary prize was the Akutagawa prize in 1958, and in 1994 he received the Nobel Prize for literature.
The procedure is simple: First you buy a slip of paper and write your wish on it. Then you position yourself at the stone and crawl through the hole. Going front to back means to break off a relationship. Going back to front expresses a wish for a new one. Many people do both; obviously you’ll have to end a relationship before you can start a new one (at least, that’s the clean way to go about it). Finally, you glue the paper to the stone and hope that your wishes will be granted.
