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Myoshinji ("Temple of the Wondrous Mind") is one Kyoto's major Zen temples. Its 13.5 hectare large grounds lie in the northern part of the city, and like those of Daitokuji, are always open to residents who want to take a pleasant shortcut home. The area is called Hanazono or "Flower Garden," and was the country residence of the abdicated Emperor of the same name. In 1337 the Emperor wanted to turn his villa into a temple and asked his teacher, the Zen master Shuho Myocho (1282-1337), to suggest a suitable first abbot. Shuho recommended his disciple Kanzan Egen (1277–1360). After Shuho's death, the Emperor continued his Zen practice under Kanzan.


[Curtains under the roof of the Hojo - colors of Buddhism]
After Kanzan's death, the temple went into decline, and in 1467, during the Onin Wars, nearly all buildings were destroyed. The temple was rebuilt by the 6th head, Sekko-Soshin Zenji (1408-86) and received the patronage of the powerful Hosokawa family and later also from the Toyotomi and Tokugawa, ensuring its continued prosperity. Most buildings we see today were built from the late 15th through early 17th centuries. The temple expanded over the centuries into a labyrinth of sub temples, of which there are now 47, concealed behind their earthen walls.
[The quiet precincts]
The first abbot Kanzan was renowned for the simplicity and austerity of his lifestyle, and that is perhaps the reason that unlike Daitokuji, Myoshinji does not recognize worldly pursuits as the tea ceremony. It also stood outside the Gozan system. As a consequence, it does not possess the many exquisite tea houses and roji gardens found at Daitokuji. All the same, there are many paintings, hanging scrolls, sliding screens and other art treasures in the possession of Myoshinji and its sub temples. Myoshinji belongs to the Rinzai Zen school, of which it is the largest branch, as big as all others together - nationwide it has more than 3,000 affiliated temples and 19 monasteries. It also operates Hanazono University, set up in 1872.
[Zen in the sand (from the dry garden of Taizoin)]
The garan with its formal array of seven buildings on a north-south axis is found at the southern end of the precincts. Starting from the south, these are the Sanmon (Mountain Gate), Butsuden (Buddha Hall), Hatto (Dharma Hall), and Hojo (Abbot’s Quarters); to the east of this axis stand the Yokushitsu (Bath House) and the Kyozo (Sutra Library) and to the west the Sodo (Monk's Hall). Many of the buildings in Myoshin-ji are National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties. Near the main temple one also finds some gorgeous black pines (kuromatsu).

The ceiling of the Lecture Hall (Hatto) boasts a painting of a dragon by Kano Tan'yu, whose eyes follow you all around the hall. It is one of the best dragon paintings in the country, made around 1661. The dragon is not only a symbol of the life force of nature, but also as a water animal a magical protection against fire. The temple bell preserved here dates from 698, making it the oldest documented one in Japan and a National Treasure. Obviously, originally it belonged to another temple. It won't ring anymore - it has been fatally cracked, but it possessed a beautiful tone, as old records tell us, the sound of impermanence itself. Of interest is also the Bath House (Yokushitsu), a steam bath built in 1656 by the uncle of Nobunaga's assassin Akechi Mitsuhide. It was not so bad to be a monk here!
[Myoshinji's bath house]
Visitors find the sub temples by venturing into the warren of winding paths. The major one is Taizoin (founded in 1404), standing conveniently west of the Sanmon Gate, famous for its two gardens: a traditional dry garden attributed to the painter Kano Motonobu, who once lived here, depicting a stream flowing between cliffs, and a modern garden with a pond, rocks and luxurious plantings such as azaleas blooming gorgeously in May, designed by renowned garden architect Nakane Kinsaku in the mid-1960s.
[The modern garden of Taizoin]
Keishunin was founded in 1632 and contains three small gardens, including a rare tea arbor; Daishinin (1492) has a modern garden again designed by Nakane Kinsaku. This finishes the list of sub temples that are normally open to visitors. Three more are of interest, but usually closed - you have to wait for a special opening around Culture Day etc. These are: Shunkoin, which owns the church bell of a Jesuit church built in the 16th c. in Kyoto and a garden of boulders based on the Ise Shrine (Shunkoin also hosts meditation classes); Reiunin featuring the oldest shoin structure in Japan, an Imperial Visit Room (Goko no Ma) dating from around 1543, as well as a fine dry garden; and Tenkyuin possessing rooms decorated with gorgeous screens by Kano Sanraku and Sansetsu. Where: Myoshinji's South Gate (Sanmon) is a short walk north of Hanazono Station on the JR Sagano line; the North Gate is a short walk from Myoshinji Station on the Keifuku Dentetsu Kitano line.  When: From 9:00 to 15:40 there are tours of the Garan (Hatto and Yokushitsu) with 20 min intervals, except around lunch time. Closed April 1 and April 8-12. 500 yen.  Taizoin: 9:00-17:00, 500 yen.  Daishinin: 9:00-17:00, 300 yen.  Keishunin: 9:00-16:30, 400 yen.

The site of the Jonangu Shrine, one the east bank of the Kamo River in what is now the southern part of Kyoto, once was the extensive Detached Palace Emperor Shirakawa and his successors. When the palace was built in the 11th century, it stood in a pastoral river landscape south of the capital. The name, "Jo-nan" points at the shrine's location as it simply means "South of the Capital."

[Haru no Yama Garden]
It is not clear how old the shrine is. The shrine's own history makes a link with the myth of Empress Jingu and her just as mythical conquest of Korea, and also mentions that the shrine guarded the southern direction when Emperor Kammu set up the capital here. But the shrine is not mentioned in the 10th century Engishiki, which covers all important shrines of the country, so it seems logical to assume it was founded later than the 10th c. Indeed, its first mention in a reliable historical text is in connection with the Toba detached palace of the 11th c. The shrine apparently formed part of a temple-shrine complex inside the palace, and was called the "Myojin of Jonan Temple." The shrine's deity may have been seen as a protector of the detached palace.

[Heian Garden - the pond]
The shrine shared the fate of the tragic destruction of said palace, but was later reconstructed. It seems to have been a fairly small and insignificant facility, a pious reminder of the imperial villas that once stood in this area. The last Kyoto emperor, Komei, visited the shrine and like all things imperial it rose in standing in the Meiji Period. The present buildings date from the late 1970s, when the shrine was rebuilt after a fire. It is in pleasant and simple State-Shinto style, with unpainted wood and cedar bark roofs, what again points at its modern origins.

There are five gardens at Jonangu, and they are all new just like those the Heian Shrine. They were designed in the late seventies by the famous landscape architect Nakane Kinsaku (1917-1995).

[Heian Garden - the meandering stream for Kyokusui no Utage]
The first garden is called Haru no Yama or Spring Hill. There is man made hill from which a brook flows, there are plum trees, camellias, azalea bushes and a bamboo grove. The stream is the location for a purification ceremony, Hitogata Nagashi, held between June 25 and 30 (people transfer their pain and sorrow to the cut-out figure of a human and let that flow away in the stream). You will also find plantings of flowers mentioned in the Genji Monogatari.

The second garden is the centerpiece at Jonangu and is called Heian Garden. It's main element is a large pond with an artificial hill at the back, many solitary stones simulating islands in the pond and again a stream leading out of the pond into the garden. This is a very attractive and well composed garden, with lots of details. The plantings add color in all seasons.

[Muromachi Garden]
The meandering stream leading out of the pond is the location for the twice-annual "Kyokusui no Utage" poetry festival. Held in April and November, people in Heian-period court costumes float cups with sake in the stream and have to compose a waka poem when the cup reaches them. A colorful spectacle that is worth visiting.

The next garden is called Muromachi Garden. This garden is again dominated by a pond, divided in half by a stone bridge. At the edge stands a tea house (where you can have matcha). There is again a lot of interesting rock work. Plantings include azaleas and small pine trees. At the back of the pond you will see a stone torii gate.

[Momoyama Garden]
The fourth garden (connected with the third) is the Momoyama Garden. This time we find a wide lawn with a rock garden and trees and neatly clipped hedges at the back. This a garden that feels very modern in spirit. It is a sort of re-interpretation of real Momoyama rock gardens. The lawn is a European influence and replaces the raked sand. There is a good balance between all elements. This is perhaps the most interesting garden at Jonangu.

Finally, the fifth garden is called Jonan Rikyu Garden. This one is smaller than the previous ones. It consist of areas of monkey grass and white gravel, a nice contrast. In the green grass stands various rocks. It is an abstract garden, but also symbolizes the arrangement of the various palaces in green gardens at the banks of a large lake (the sand).

[Jonan Rikyu Garden]
A 15-min walk south-west of Takeda Station on the subway and Kintetsu lines. Walk south along the line and turn west at a sake shop where you also see the pagoda of the Konoe Tomb. Turn south to the large road with traffic lights and follow this road in a western direction. Pass under the ramp of the expressway. After seeing the area with love hotels on your right, you will find the white walls of Jonangu on your left. Go around to find the entrance. Gardens open 9:00-16:30 (last entry 16:00). 500 yen. Shrine grounds free.　

The Sumiyoshi Shrine in Osaka is one of the great unknowns among foreign tourists, who flock to the ferroconcrete castle and neglect this beautiful shrine with its "national treasure" class structures. The only excuse is that it stands a bit eccentric, in a southern corner of the city. Originally, it stood at the coast but due to land reclaiming projects in recent times, the sea is now a few kilometers removed and can not be seen because of intervening apartment blocks (incongruously, an old lighthouse still stands beside one of the flats, just south of Suminoe Park).


The earliest historical reference to the shrine dates from 686, when emperor Temmu visited to make an offering. It is possible the shrine dates back a few centuries earlier, when contacts with Korea grew and ships bound for the continent set out from the port of Suminoe (a name that can also be read as Sumiyoshi). The shrine served to pray for safe sea travel.

 
Sumiyoshi became the most important shrine in the Osaka area and also received support from the court. Its powerful supporters donated many treasures to the shrine, but the real treasure are the buildings themselves. The NT Main Hall (1810) is in fact a series of four halls. Three are dedicated to the three Sumiyoshi deities, who appeared when the Creator God Izanagi washed the impurities from the Underworld away; the fourth is given to the mythical empress Jingu, who led a campaign against Korea. At that time the Sumiyoshi deities guided her ships to the continent and gave her the necessary protection.

 
The three Sumiyoshi-deity shrines stand in a neat row, one behind the other as a convoy of ships, while the building for the deified Empress stands to the side of the first shrine structure - as if it was added as an afterthought. All the four sanctuaries have the same building plan. Inside are two rooms, the second closed off as it houses the deity. The red pillars and white plank walls provide a nice contrast, also with the many trees in the shrine grounds.

Another interesting structure in the shrine is an arched bridge that is indeed very steep. Not for nothing it is a popular playground for the neighborhood's children. The bridge was originally given to the shrine by Yodogimi, the widow of Hideyoshi.


The shrine has several popular festivals, among them the Rice-Planting Festival (Otaue Matsuri) on June 14 and the Sumiyoshi Matsuri, the shrine's summer festival, from July 30 to August 1.

Sumiyoshi park, just south of the shrine, is interesting to walk into, not only for the Basho haiku stone standing to the left of the path after entering it from the shrine side, but also for the many pine and camphor trees it harbors. These trees originally graced the beach, in the good old days that humans still respected nature (or were not powerful enough to destroy it).
Where: 3-min. walk from Sumiyoshi Taisha Station on the Nankai Main Line, or from Sumiyoshi Torii-mae Station on the Hankai Line. When: March-May and September: 6:00-17:00; June-August: 6:00-18:00; October-February: 6:30-17:00. How much: Grounds free. 

The Tokugawa shoguns ruled from Tokyo (then called Edo) for almost three centuries. You would think there was still a lot to remind you of them, something like Louis XIV and Versailles... Well, forget it: the castle from which they ruled was destroyed when they fell from power in 1867 and the land is now occupied by the imperial palace; one of their two grand ancestral temples in Edo, Kaneiji, was destroyed and made into a public park - the Ueno Park of cherry blossom fame (although the blossoms were already famous when Kaneiji still stood here!) - the temple's sad fate is clear when you realize that its pagoda now stands in the Ueno Zoo... The second ancestral temple, Zojoji, in its turn was cut up to make space for Tokyo Tower and a bowling hall and the mausoleums of the shoguns in that temple were bombed to pieces in WWII - all the more tragic since the second shogun once occupied a mausoleum of the same class as those in Nikko, one that now would have been a national treasure. And, finally, the shrine where the founder of the shogunate, Ieyasu, is revered, stands in a forlorn and almost forgotten corner of Ueno Park. Let's have a look at the remnants of the shoguns... 

[Three hollyhocks within a circle is the emblem of the Tokugawa shoguns]
Edo Castle 
Edo Castle was the biggest castle in Japan - something now difficult to imagine. As with all destroyed castles, only the giant walls stand as a silent testimony to former greatness. The castle at which feet the city of Edo grew up (and to which it thanked its very existence) was first founded in 1457 by the warlord Ota Dokan. He built it on a hill adjacent to Tokyo Bay. It was also known as the Chiyoda Castle, a name still reverberating in the ward encompassing the castle grounds.

In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu took over that castle and in 1603 turned it into the centerpiece of his new capital Edo. It would remain the political center of Japan for the next 250 years of Tokugawa rule. It had a total circumference of 16 kilometers, an area within which also the shogun's palace and government offices were enclosed. The castle originally boasted a black donjon that looked down upon Edo like a soaring eagle. This towering structure burned in 1657 and was never rebuilt. By that time, Tokugawa power was secure and this type of fortification had become unnecessary.

[Moat and tower of Edo Castle]
The shogunal palace, which stood in the Honmaru area (the first citadel) was destroyed in 1863. In its heyday, it covered an area of 33,000 sq. m. One can get a glimpse of the beauty of these palatial quarters in the Nijo Castle in Kyoto, the only case where such a ceremonial palace has been preserved intact. The only remaining original Honmaru buildings are the Fujimi Yagura and Fujimi Tamon (a small keep and defense house).

The Ninomaru or second citadel contained shogunal residences as well - usually the heir apparent lived here. These buildings were also destroyed in 1867 and now we only have the Hyakunin Bansho (a guardhouse for 100 samurai) and Doshin Bansho left as sad remnants. After Edo had become Tokyo, the empty shell of the castle was partly filled by setting up the imperial palace in the grounds of the Nishinomaru. The Kitanomaru site, the northern part of the castle grounds, has become an open park, with the National Museum of Modern Art and the Budokan.

[Location of the donjon of Edo Castle]
Since the early sixties of the 20th c., also parts of the Honmaru and Ninomaru were restored and opened to the public. Together these are now called the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace or Higashi Gyoen. There are green lawns, a Japanese-style garden, and impressive, crumbling walls, but above all it is a welcome oxygen break in the city. Don't miss the small but fine museum housing the imperial collection, called the Sannomaru Shozokan. Almost next to the museum is a rest house with a small shop where a good English brochure of the East Gardens is sold.

One enters by either the Otemon (one of the original castle gates, built in 1620), Hirakawamon or Kitahanebashimon gates. All three are in the masugata form, meaning there is a square-shaped enclosure between two separate doors, like the security gates in modern buildings. In the central part of the gardens, large blocks of stone have been put in place where once the donjon rose into the sky. Once one could look down upon the city from here, but now the surrounding office buildings soar much higher, so it takes some effort to dream them away and imagine the donjon and, in the grassy field in front of it, the shogunal palace (a small-scale model of this palace is on view in the Edo-Tokyo Museum). Anyway, you need a lot of imagination of you want to see old Edo in present-day Tokyo...

[Remnants of the Ninomaru Garden of Edo Castle]
The carefully landscaped Ninomaru garden of Edo Castle was restored in the 1960s. It lies at the foot of the Shiomizaka slope and is thought to incorporate a garden originally laid out in 1630 by Kobori Enshu. There is not much left of that old garden; in fact, it would be correct to state that the old pond has been used as a starting point to lay out a completely new garden. In part of the Ninomaru area, also 260 symbolic trees from all of Japan's prefectures have been planted and there is a small teahouse to make the refined atmosphere complete. The Honmaru, by the way, has spacious lawns and thus provides the contrast of a more Western-style garden. The East Gardens are not at the pinnacle of garden art, but this is as close as one can come to nature in the center of the metropolis.

Kaneiji 
There were two shogunal temples in Edo: Zojoji and Kaneiji and both have fallen on sad times. If you think the fate of Zojoji is hard (having had to give up much of its land to the Prince Hotel, a bowling center, and the obscenity of Tokyo Tower, now towering over it like a modern pagoda), then you have not seen Kaneiji yet. Kaneiji has been so much split up and scattered that it seems as if there never was a temple here. Its Main Hall has been tucked away behind the heavy barrier of the Tokyo National Museum, and its pagoda has ended up right in the middle of Ueno Zoo.

[Kaneiji]
Kaneiji Temple was established in 1625 by the Buddhist priest Tenkai, on the request of the Tokugawa shogun. The temple was located to the northwest of Edo Castle, a direction that was considered to be unlucky and therefore needed some spiritual protection. The temple complex was enormous, covering more than a million square meters, and possessing dozens of buildings. It was one of the most important temples of the Tendai sect, with headquarters on Mt. Hiei near Kyoto, and therefore was called the "Hiei of the East." In its glory days it was twice as large as Ueno Park today. Its buildings were almost all destroyed by fire during the short war that raged here when the shogunate fell in 1867, as some of its troops used the temple grounds to make a last stand.

The rather simple, present temple buildings were brought from the Kitain Temple in Kawagoe in 1879; they stand north of the park. In the park itself, only two of the original buildings still survive: the Kiyomizudo Temple, a smaller imitation of the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, including the stage; and the Five Story Pagoda (Goju no To) standing forlornly inside Ueno Zoo.

[Gate to Shogunal graveyard, Kaneiji]
As all buildings have disappeared, one could say that all that is left of the shoguns, are their graves, and even these are not intact. Except for Ieyasu, the first, and Iemitsu, the third shogun, all others were buried in Edo, in either Kaneiji or Zojoji in Shiba. War and real estate development have taken their toll of both places. In both locations the dead shoguns were literally bombed out of their graves in WWII. In Zojoji the shogunal remains were moved with what was left of their tombs to a new cemetery at the back of the temple. Precious buildings, on a par with those of Nikko, were destroyed; close to Zojoji still one of the gates remains in half dilapidated state.

In Ueno their fate was not much better - here the cemetery lies next to Kaneiji, right behind the Tokyo National Museum. The cemeteries, by the way, are usually closed; the one in Zojoji I once found open on one of the temple's festival days (September 15), but there was not much to see.

[Ueno Toshogu]
Ueno Toshogu 
What is left is the Ueno branch of the Nikko Toshogu shrine, where Ieyasu has been deified. Such branches, all on a smaller scale but often as gorgeously decorated as the original, were in the 17th century set up all over the country. The shrine, built in Gongen style like the ones in Nikko, was erected in 1627 and the elaborately decorated buildings were remodeled in 1651. The 50 stone and bronze lanterns that line the approach were gifts of daimyo. The best part is perhaps the Karamon or Chinese-style gate in front of the main building, which has been attributed to the famous 17th century sculptor Hidari Jingoro. With its delicate wood carvings and golden screens it is the only place where one can get a glimpse of the splendor of the shoguns - the splendor that dominated Edo but which now has faded into oblivion...

[Lanterns donated by daimyo, Ueno Toshogu] East Gardens of the Imperial Palace
Where: 5-min. walk from Otemachi Station (exit C13b) on the Chiyoda and other subway lines; 15-min. walk from Tokyo Station (if one enters via the Otemon gate).
When: 9:15-16:15. Cl. Monday, Friday, Year-end and New Year period. The gardens may also be closed unexpectedly for court functions.
How much: free

Kaneiji
Where: 15-min. walk from Ueno Station on the Ginza and Hibiya Subway Lines or JR Line.
When: grounds open in daytime
How much: free

Ueno Toshogu
Where: 10-min. walk from Ueno Station on the Ginza and Hibiya Subway Lines or JR Line.
When: 9:00-17:30 (summer: 18:00)
How much: ¥200

One of the most powerful early Japanese business tycoons was Fujita Denzaburo (1841-1912), who set up a conglomerate (Fujita-gumi) of companies active in mining, civil engineering, railways, electrical power generation, finance, textiles and newspapers. Mr Fujita, who was the first commoner to receive the title of "Baron," was not only a sharp businessman, he was also a cultivated person who collected art and practised the tea ceremony - he was known for his lavish spending to acquire expensive tea wares.

  [The Fujita Art Museum - storehouse and pagoda]
Born in the castle town of Hagi in the Choshu fief in 1841 as the son of a sake brewer, Mr. Fujita as a young man came to Osaka to go into business. As the oligarchical Meiji government was for fifty percent formed by politicians from his old fief Choshu, we may safely assume that his "Old Boys network" was of prime importance in helping his businesses rake in profits. Besides buying magnificent art works, Mr Fujita also established villas in several prime spots in Japan. They were after his death renovated as the Taikoen in Osaka, the Chinzanso in Tokyo, the Hotel Fujita in Kyoto and the Kowakien in Hakone. 

  [Fujita Art Museum seen from the Fujitatei-ato Park]
The Taikoen stands on the spot where his main residence was and here one also finds the Fujita Art Museum as well as a remnant of the original gardens. In WWII the baronial mansion was destroyed in an air raid, but fortunately the stone kura in the garden containing the artworks remained intact, and that storehouse now serves as a sort of "retro style" museum building. Through a corridor of what looks like an old school building, one comes to the storehouse. Inside, this has been beautifully fitted out with wood. Although there is an upper floor, too, the storehouse is quite small. That gives ample time to view at leisure the exquisite art works exhibited here, but it also leaves one with a feeling of disappointment: when you know how rich the total collection is, the amount on display during the two short annual exhibitions, is rather tiny (as is usual in small private museums in Japan, there is no standing exhibition).

  [Fujitatei-ato Park, in the background Osaka Business Park]
The collection numbers approximately 5,000 articles and comprises 9 National Treasures and 48 Important Cultural Properties. While tea utensils form the heart of the collection (as in the case of most other Meiji industrialists), there are also excellent Chinese and Japanese-style paintings, calligraphy, sculpture and lacquerware. A famous piece is the "Yohen Tenmoku-glaze Tea Bowl" (one of the three in Osaka museums), possessing a beautiful iridescent bluish gloss on its black glaze – as if you are looking at the starry firmament. Also famous is the "Picture Scroll based on the Diary of Murasaki Shikibu," the first part of a hand scroll in Yamato-e style from the early Kamakura period (13th c.). The "Genjo Sanzo-e" (“Illustrated hand scroll of the Monk Xuanzang,” 14th c.) is a set of 12 picture scrolls depicting the life of Xuanzang, the Chinese Tang dynasty monk who made an arduous journey through Central Asia to collect Buddhist scriptures and artifacts in India. There are Chinese-style ink paintings ("New Moon over a Brushwood Gate," 1405), a sutra box decorated in maki-e lacquer with scenes from the Lotus Sutra (11th c.) and many other treasures. As the collection puts the emphasis on tea utensils, one will often encounter chanoyu bowls, flower vases, water containers, and incense boxes. Whatever is on display in this museum, the value is always high.

  [Sakura along the Yodo River on the way
from the Fujita Art Museum to Nakanoshima]
Although the museum also has a small garden with a beautiful pagoda brought down from Mt Koya, adjacent to it lies the large Fujitatei-ato Park, containing the remnants of the original gardens of Baron Fujita. These are now under the management of the City of Osaka as part of Sakuranomiya Park. Interesting is that Mr Fujita built his mansion on the site of Daichoji Temple, which figures in Chikamatsu Monzaemon's puppet play from 1720 "Ten no Amashima Suicides." The present gardens, with a grassy green and flowering trees, are pleasant as a city park, but not very special from the point of view of garden architecture, as perhaps too much was destroyed.

Where: 2 min walk from exit 3 of Osakajo-Kitazume St on the JR Tozai line. For the museum, turn left after exiting the station; for the gardens, turn right (the entrance of the gardens is therefore on the opposite side of the entrance to the museum). On the other side of the road opposite the museum stands the Taikoen restaurant, now mainly a venue for weddings.  When: Note that the museum is only open for the spring (early March to early June) and autumn exhibition (early September to early December), when about 40-50 pieces from the collection are exhibited according to various themes. 10:00-16:00, closed on Monday (unless a National Holiday, when closed the following day). The gardens are in principle everyday open, 10:00-16:00. How much: Museum JPY 800; gardens free.

Popularly known as "Ohatsu Tenjin," the official name of this shrine is Tsuyu Tenjinsha. The founding goes back to the now grey times more than 1,300 years ago when metropolitan Osaka was a bay with scattered islands and sandbanks. It is difficult to imagine among today's profusion of concrete and glass, not to forget all those humans moving around among them. It was a quiet and lonely place when our shrine was founded on one of these islands, Sone-su. In the 11th c. things improved when the island became part of the mainland thanks to a land reclamation project. A village named Sonezaki was establsihed and the shrine became the guardian of the community. When the railways came in the late 19th century, the area turned into the gateway to Osaka, but the shrine still guards the surrounding area.

[The shrine building]
At the origin of the shrine stands the leading court scholar Sugawara Michizane. Falsely accused, this Minister of the Right was exiled to Dazaifu in Kyushu. On his way in exile, traveling down from the capital Kyoto, he visited this shrine and composed a poem which means something like: "My sleeve is soaked with dew formed by the tears I shed recalling Kyoto." "Dew" is "tsuyu" - and so the official name of the shrine was born, Tsuyu Tenjinsha. Michizane would go on to be deified as Tenjin, the patron saint of scholarship.

  [Statue of Tokubei and Ohatsu]
Now the popular name. "Ohatsu" is the female protagonist in a play written for the puppet theater (bunraku or ningyo joruri) by master playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, called Sonezaki Shinju ("The Love Suicides of Sonezaki"). This work relates the tragic love story of Tokubei, a shop clerk, and Ohatsu, a courtesan, who seeing no way out for their love (it was socially accepted to visit a courtesan, but falling in love with her would lead to ostracism - like in 19th c. Europe) were driven to suicide in the woods of the shrine grounds - woods which do not exist anymore, by the way. The play was based on a real incident that happened in 1703 and became tremendously popular, bringing many new visitors to the shrine, who started calling it "Ohatsu Tenjin." Because of the association with the love story of Tokubei and Ohatsu, even today many couples wishing to have a strong bond visit to pray (enmusubi) - although I would think that the affair between the puppet lovers is not a good omen as it ended rather badly!



  [The shopping arcade]
The present shrine buildings date from 1957 - they were rebuilt after their destruction in WWII. The area around the shrine with the Ohatsu Tenjindori Shopping Arcade today has a pleasantly retro atmosphere. It is a warm and comfortable place and the shrine itself is always busy with visitors.
Where: Near JR Osaka St, Umeda St on the Hankyu, Hanshin and subway Midosuji lines, and Higashi Umeda St on the subway Tanimachi line.
When: The shrine grounds are always open.
How much: Free.
Note: On the 1st and 3rd Friday of every month, the shrine holds a flea market wherein about 30 antique dealers participate. On the 3rd Friday and Saturday of July the summer festival is celebrated, with lion dances, umbrella dances and big drums.
Website: www.tuyutenjin.com/



 

Ako is a municipality in the western part of Hyogo Prefecture, bordering the Bizen area of Okayama. It has a certain tourist fame thanks to the fact that Ako was the castle town of Lord Asano Naganori, also called Takumi no Kami, who only being a third-generation daimyo in 1701 lost his life and castle by impulsively assaulting one of his superiors inside the shogun's palace in Edo - a historical incident that gave rise to the famous story of the Forty-Seven Ronin or Chushingura, and the ensuing boom in Joruri, Kabuki and much later, also film and novels. In fiction, however, the character of Lord Asano was changed and from what really was a sort of villain - who attacked a colleague from behind with a sword - he was made into a tragic hero.

Ako was a small but rich fief thanks to salt production on the coast. The castle was built in 1645 by Asano Naganao on the alluvial plain of the Chikusa River. It used to have 12 gates and 10 yagura towers and as it stood immediately at the seaside, one could set sail from docks located in the castle. Salt making took place in salt pans at the seaside and the salt from Ako was sold in the capital Edo and all over Japan.

Tourism in Ako has been built around the Forty-seven Ronin memories, but the problem is that there is not really much to be seen. The castle was dismantled in the early Meiji-period, and although a wall and one gate and one tower have been rebuilt, it doesn't add up to much, especially as - in contrast to for example nearby Tatsuno Castle - the castle grounds have only partly been restored. They just peter out in fields and a large parking lot and have not been made as a whole into a park. There is no unity.

  [Restored yagura tower of Ako Castle]
The largest space inside the castle grounds is taken up by the Oishi Shrine  dedicated to the leader of the Forty-Seven Ronin, but this was only built in 1900 and is a very commercial-looking affair, not more than a tourist trap. It is second-hand Shinto, and the Forty-seven Ronin statues outside are very ugly - there are more of these in the Treasure Hall if you can stomach the steep fee.

That leaves two things. One is the gate to the house of Oishi Yoshio (Kuranosuke), the Ako chamberlain who led the secret vendetta of the forty-seven. The gate is said to be the original one on which the messenger from Edo knocked, bringing the news of Lord Asano's forced seppuku.


[Gate to Oishi Yoshio's mansion]
The other structure of interested in the castle grounds - and for me the largest point of interest in all of Ako - is the Ako City Museum of History, built in traditional style at the site of the former rice storehouses of the castle. Its displays are mainly about salt production (tools, models) and the Forty-seven Ronin (ukiyoe). There is also a model of the type of ship that carried the salt, packed in straw, to Edo. Although there is nothing in English, two nice videos about both these subjects are shown as well.
[Ako City Museum of History]
Besides the castle and its attractions, Ako also boasts Kagakuji Temple, founded in 1645 as the family temple of the Asano clan - it features grave monuments (the main grave of Lord Asano is however in Sengakuji in Tokyo)  and more Forty-seven Ronin replicas.

Don't forget to taste the local product - salt -, which is best done in the shape of the Shiomi Manju cakes sold in the town - as usual, the inside consists of azuki bean paste, but to the shell some Ako salt has been added.
Ako is easily accessible from the Kansai area. Its station, Banshu Ako, is on a branch line from the main Sanyo line, called Ako line, but there are through trains to Banshu Ako from Kyoto/Osaka/Kobe - otherwise, change trains in Himeji. The Ako castle grounds are 20 min on foot from the station. The Ako City History Museum is open from 9:00-17:00, but closed on Wednesdays and at year end/New Year. Entrance fee is 200 yen.

Suma Rikyu Park lies in the western part of Kobe, not far from the Suma Temple. The 58 hectare large park, situated on the side of Mt. Tsukimiyama, finds it origin in a villa of Count Otani Kozui (1876-1948), who was the 22nd abbot of the Nishi-Honganji Temple in Kyoto and also sponsored three archaeological expeditions to Central Asia (the findings formed the important Otani Collection, parts of which can still be seen in the National Museum of Tokyo and elsewhere). In 1907, the site was bought by the Imperial Household Agency, and the Suma Rikyu (Suma Detached Palace) was finished in 1914 - the official name, by the way, was Muko Rikyu. Old photos show a big structure like the halls of the Gosho Palace in Kyoto. The garden was designed by Fukuba Itsusen.

     [Plum blossoms in Suma Rikyu]
However, this all perished during the heavy bombings of 1945. The buildings were gone, but the garden was as much as possible restored to the original state, and in 1967 was donated by the Imperial House to the City of Kobe, in commemoration of the marriage of the present Emperor (then Crown Prince).

    [Plum blossoms in Suma Rikyu]
There is also an eastern part of 24 hectares, connected by a footbridge, that originally formed a residence and garden belonging to the Okazaki Zaibatsu (a local industrial group - mainly shipping and banking). It was in 1973 acquired by the City of Kobe and added to the park, but the residence was destroyed in the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.

    [Early sakura in Suma Rikyu]
The Rikyu Garden consists mainly of a Western-style garden of the Versailles type, with cascades, a canal and rows of fountains, as well as a square with a large fountain. The park also features a large rose garden, an iris garden and a camellia garden. An old stone lantern still stands as a lonely reminder of the former imperial gardens. A lookout-point provides a view over Suma and the nearby sea. A drive lined with maple trees is gorgeous in autumn.

  [The main view - canals and fountains - in Suma Rikyu Park]
The botanical garden built on the former Okazaki premises features a greenhouse, a plum garden, a hydrangea garden, an English garden and a Japanese garden with a tearoom. There are also a few cherry trees. The plum trees come in many varieties and have all been neatly labeled (in Japanese). I found two statues in the garden: one of the god Poseidon, throwing a spear, in front of the restaurant and donated by Greece and a modern statue of Don Quixote on a stumbling and panting Rosinante.

    [Fountain in Suma Rikyu Park]
Hours: 9:00-17:00 (enter by 16:30): in spring and autumn, there are sometimes longer opening times in the evening. Closed on Thursdays and from Dec. 29-Jan 3.  Fee: 400 yen (a year card, also valid for the Shinrin Botanical Garden and Sorakuen Garden is 900 yen)  Access: 10 min walk from Suma Station on either the JR or Sanyo Dentetsu lines (note that coming from Kobe Sannomiya or Motomachi, the JR ticket is 170 yen, but the combined Hanshin/Hankyu/Sanyo Dentetsu ticket is 320 yen because of the change of operator along the way - one of the rare cases that the JR is cheaper!). After exiting the station  proceed in an eastern direction along Kokudo 2 for about 5 min, then take the Rikyu Road (lined with small pine trees) north all the way to the Main Entrance of the park. There is also an eastern entrance to the a park, about 7 min from Tsukimiyama Station on the Sanyo Dentetsu Line, but this can not be recommended, as the environment with a highway ramp is rather vulgar.

"Gyoen" is the name for the part of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto that is always open to the public, the park so to speak that surrounds the Gosho and Sento Gosho Palaces and other buildings. The important point to note is that historically this was not a park, but that the area was filled with the mansions of the noblest families of Japan, aristocrats who served at the Imperial Court and from among whose daughters consorts for the emperors were selected. That were families as the Kujo, the Saionji, etc.


[Kyoto Gyoen. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

Their residences were situated inside the palace enclosure, surrounding the palace proper. After the emperor moved to Tokyo in 1868, those families followed him and their residences were dismantled. Of course, these mansions also had great gardens and some of the trees in the Gyoen Park are indeed very old; others were newly planted.


[White plum blossoms in Kyoto Gyoen. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

After WWII, Kyoto Gyoen was turned into a public park. With its abundant and beautiful green trees and lawns, Kyoto Gyoen is an easily accessible place to enjoy the changes of the seasons: from plum trees to peach trees, and from cherry blossoms to autumn foliage.


[Plum blossoms in Kyoto Gyoen. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

The plum trees stand in the southwestern corner, just north of the Kaninnomiya Mansion Site, where the walls and gate of the old compound have been rebuilt (inside is a hall where often small exhibitions are held). There are about 300 plum trees, intermingled with other, stately old trees. Blossoming time is usually the last week of February and the first week of March. Next to the plum garden is an area where peach trees have been planed; these blossom in mid-March. The beautiful weeping cherries, in their turn, stand in the northwestern corner of the park.


[Wintersweet (Cimonanthus) in Kyoto Gyoen. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

Among the normal plums also stand a few low trees of the wintersweet (cimonanthus), a plant which like the plum came to Japan from China. It produces a deliciously, sweet scent and flowers somewhat earlier than the plum tree. In Japan it is called robai (蝋梅), so also written with the character for plum, although it is an entirely different tree.

Admission: free. For seeing the plum blossoms, the most convenient station is Marutamachi on the Subway Karasuma Line. 

Kuginuki Jizo (or, officially, Shakuzoji) is a small temple sitting in the northern part of Senbon Street in Kyoto. The name means the “Jizo that pulls out nails,” and is a wordplay on “Kunuki,” or “removing pain.”

  [The Jizo Hall with its wooden votive panels with nippers and nails]
According to legend, the Jizo was carved by the famous priest Kukai from a stone he brought back from his sojourn in China. In reality, of course, it must have been one of the many anonymous carved stones standing at the wayside in old Japan. The main image of the temple, an Amida Trinity from the 13th century, was likewise set up by the wayside and later incorporated into the temple.

[Giant, decorative nippers in front of the small temple hall]
The temple must originally have grown up on the basis of the legend that the Jizo statue could bring relief from distress. It was only in the 16th century that a new and more vivid legend took over. A certain merchant had terrible pain in his hands. In a dream the stone Jizo of this temple appeared to him and removed two nails from his hands, telling him they were a punishment because in a previous life he had felt a grudge towards another person. The next day the merchant visited the temple, and saw two bloody nails on the altar – and his pain was miraculously gone.

[Offerings out of gratitude of nails and nippers]
So from then on, when people thought the Jizo helped them find relief, they would offer a set of two nails and a nail puller attached to a small wooden board to the temple as a token of gratitude. The custom still exists and many of these sets have been attached to the outside wall of the Jizo Hall – a most original decoration. The temple is always busy with supplicants.

[Jizo is present in the temple grounds as well]
Hrs.: 8：30～16：30. Free. Access: 3 min walk from Kyoto City Bus stop "Senbon Kamidachiuri."

Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927) was a short story writer, essayist and haiku poet who died young at age 35, but whose about one hundred stories and novellas have become a hard and fast part of the canon of modern Japanese literature, not in the least thanks to his stylistic perfectionism and keen psychological insight. Shortly after Akutagawa was born - with the original family name Niihara - , his mother went insane, and he therefore was adopted into the family of his maternal uncle, whose surname he assumed. From a young age he was a voracious and eclectic reader of Western, Japanese and Chinese literature, and at Tokyo University, where he went in 1913, he studied English literature. After graduation, he briefly taught English, before deciding to devote his life wholeheartedly to literature - he was a fixed contributor to the Osaka Mainichi newspaper. He married in 1918 and had three sons, one of whom became the famous conductor and composer Akutagawa Yasushi.

Akutagawa's first short story to be published was Rashomon, in 1915, and it was praised by veteran author Natsume Soseki, who became a sort of mentor. At this time Akutagawa also started writing haiku, perhaps following the example of Soseki - it is a genre in which Akutagawa's efforts only in recent times have been properly evaluated. In the next years, Akutagawa especially wrote stories set in the past, reinterpreting classical works or historical incidents, and infusing them with modern psychology. But he also wrote modern stories and, in his final years, autobiographical stories, which show his emotional exhaustion.

Akutagawa suffered from insomnia and hallucinations, a condition that had been worsened by an unhappy stint in China in 1921 for the Osaka Mainichi. While searching for new themes in his novels at a time that the "I-Novel" dominated the literary scene, he was harassed by personal misfortune: the burning down of his sister's house, the suicide of that sister's husband, the fact that as head of the family he had to look after those family members, a burden for which he didn't have the strength - also financially, as he only subsisted on his meager income as a story writer. Increasingly paranoid, in the end, he fled the world he found so uncomfortable. On Sunday, July 24, 1927, Akutagawa took a fatal dose of a sleeping aid (Veronal, a barbiturate with which Virginia Woolf had tried suicide but failed) and passed away aged 35. Beside his pillow he left a note in which he explained that he had killed himself because of “a vague unease about my future.”  In 1935, Akutagawa's friend, the writer Kikuchi Kan established the Akutagawa Prize, which is today is still considered as the most prestigious Japanese literary award for aspiring writers.

  [Akutagawa Ryunosuke, photo Wikipedia]
The best stories by Akutagawa are in my view: "Hell Screen" ("Jigokuhen," 1917). Does great art demand the artist to give up human feelings to reach the pinnacle of his powers? That is the question asked in this story of a medieval painter who looks on at the sacrifice of his daughter to create the best work he can. In order to make a screen with a depiction of sinners tormented in Buddhist Hell, the painter - who can only paint from life - has a carriage set on fire in which the evil feudal lord - out of spite for his rebuffed love - has secretly chained and gagged the painter's beautiful daughter. The painter, who has been shown earlier on to have a cruel streak, is first shocked at seeing his daughter in the fatal carriage, but then when the flames leap up and she writhes in agony, he starts painting in ecstasy. Akutagawa has clearly modernized the story, for in pre-modern Japan painters always worked after templates, in the fixed style of the school to which they belonged - there was no such thing as individual originality and "painting after life." But that comment does not make the story less beautiful... "Hell Screen" was filmed several times (for example in 1969 as a Toho costume drama), and in 1953 was also made into a Kabuki play by Mishima Yukio. "Spinning Gears" ("Haguruma," 1927; the title has also been rendered as "Cogwheels"). The strongest of the autobiographical tales Akutagawa wrote in the years before his death - the reader almost feels he is pulled down the same dark hole as Akutagawa himself. The narrator is a novelist staying in a hotel in Tokyo to write stories. He takes long walks around the city, suffering from insomnia, and gradually loses his grip on reality. A whole life boils down to a few days of intense suffering, and finally inexhaustible paranoia. "In a Bamboo Grove" ("Yabu no Naka," 1922). A perfect demonstration of how humans all interpret events in different ways, and not coincidentally always to their own advantage. Pride and vanity keep us from seeing the truth (if the truth exists at all...). A samurai and his wife travel through a dense forest, they meet a robber, the samurai eventually dies, a passing-by woodcutter reports the crime. The woodcutter, a priest, the robber, the gentleman and his lady all have their own, self-serving versions of the same murder (or was it suicide?) - even the dead man speaking via a medium is still telling lies from over the grave... Together with "Rashomon" this story formed the basis for the classic film Rashomon by Kurosawa Akira. In fact, in my mind the stories are so indelibly linked to the film, that when reading them, before my eyes I see the images of Mifune Toshiro as the bandit, Kyo Machiko as the lady and Shimura Takashi as the woodcutter... "Kesa and Morito" ("Kesa to Morito," 1918). A historical story about the infatuation of a palace guard for a married court lady, told in two monologues, first by the guard, Morito, and then by the lady, Kesa. In the original story in The Rise and Fall of the Genji and Heike (around 1400), Kesa is a paragon of fidelity and she only yields to the violent Morito (in fact her cousin) in order to save her mother, who is threatened by the lovesick man. Next, she asks Morito to kill her husband, as she can not bear the shame of being the wife of two men. This is  a ruse, though, for she ties up her hair and lies in the bed of her husband, waiting for the killer. Morito by mistake cuts off the head of his beloved and mad with grief, he finally becomes a Buddhist ascetic. The original story of Kesa was also used by Kinugasa Teinosuke in the 1953 film Gate of Hell (Jigokumon). Akutagawa probes the complex motives of both Morito and Kesa - in his version Kesa commits adultery out of vanity and ambivalent feelings towards Miroto rather than sacrifice for her mother. "Dragon" ("Ryu," 1919). Another historical tale. A priest who is fond of practical jokes, puts up a sign next to the Sarusawa Pond in Nara with the message: "On the third day of the third month, the dragon of this pond will ascend to heaven." To his own surprise, a huge crowd, from high to low, is assembled at the pond on that day and later all watchers believe they indeed saw a dragon rise up from the pond - the priest is unable to convince them that the sign was just a joke. A perfect story of religious obsession (the dragon in Japan is sacred, like a deity), showing that religion could well just be a form of mass hysteria. "The Nose" ("Hana," 1916). Akutagawa's second story, which gained him much initial fame, based on a classical collection of tales. A renowned priest with an ugly and hugely long nose after much trouble finally gets rid of his nemesis - but then longs to have it back, as he is nothing special anymore. That the vain and egotistic priest is only obsessed about the state of his nose can be seen as a comment on the relative positions in human society of religion and personal vanity. "Rashomon" (1915). Akutagawa's use of the dilapidated Rashomon gate was deliberately symbolic, the gate's ruined state representing the moral and physical decay of Japanese civilization and culture in the later Heian period (12th c.). The story is quite gruesome: a manservant who has lost his job must choose between honesty and crime. We see how he gradually decides to become a thief, when observing that an old hag on the attic of the Rashomon gate is tearing out the hair of dead bodies dumped there to make wigs. The old woman becomes his first victim, in good Dostoyevsky-style... Used as the "frame" for Kurosawa's above mentioned film. "Death Register" ("Tenkibo," 1926). A short but stark and harsh record of the deaths of three close family members, containing a sad look at Akutagawa's estranged, insane mother, the elder sister he never knew and the father who gave him up as an infant. Akutagawa suggests that the difference between the living and the dead is barely perceptible, like a shimmer of heat on a summer day. "Mandarins" ("Mikan," 1919). A jaded young man is shocked into feelings of human warmth when he sees a servant girl (whom he first despised as crude and stupid) throw oranges from the train to her younger brothers. The mikan is a popular citrus fruit, consumed in great quantities in winter.  "O'er a Withered Moor" ("Karenosho," 1918). Relates the death of haiku poet Basho, and the selfish thoughts his disciples harbor at his deathbed, although supposedly "lost to boundless grief." A personal meditation that was also influenced by the early death in 1916 at age 49 of Akutagawa's mentor Natsume Soseki. The tile is based on Basho's final haiku, his death poem: Ill on a journey / Wandering in fevered dreams / O'er a withered moor. (See my post about this haiku). [Haiku monument in the Minamo-Mido Temple in Osaka,
in front of which the flower shop stood where Basho breathed his last]
And here are two great stories that as far as I know have not yet been translated:
"A Painting of Autumn Mountains" ("Shuzanzu," 1921). Story set in ancient China. About "the greatest painting of all times," that is an overarching presence in the minds of two art lovers. And "in the mind" is how they want to keep it, for when they are shown a painting that is none other than the famous "greatest painting" they have been enthusing over all their lives, they find it so disappointing that they decide it is not the "real thing." Indeed, the "real thing" only exists in their imagination... "The General" ("Shogun," 1922). Features a brutal character named "N Shogun," who may have been based on General Nogi, the hero of the bloody Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The story was considered as controversial and heavily censored, but it is an interesting critique of the authorities. Another perfect anti-war tale is The Story of a Head that Fell Off in the Penguin translation by Jay Rubin. 10 out of 10 points. Besides somewhat older translations which are still being reprinted by Tuttle, we have two volumes of excellent modern renderings of Akutagawa's prose: Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, translated by Jay Rubin and with an introduction by Murakami Haruki (Penguin Classics, 2006)

Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Charles de Wolf (Archipelago Books, 2007) There is only an overlap of a few stories between these two volumes. Rubin - well-known for his translations of several novels by Murakami Haruki - includes both a generous selection of the historical tales, modern fiction, and autobiographical works, while Keio University Professor De Wolf mostly selects stories set in modern times. Rubin includes nos 1-3 and 5-8 from the above list, and De Wolf nos 2, 4, 9, and 10.

In the Edo-period, Osaka was the trading center of Japan. Not only did important wares such as rice pass through its warehouses before being distributed nationwide, Osaka was also the financial center of Japan. One of the items on which merchants from Osaka had a nationwide monopoly, was herbal medine. As initially Japanese medicine was based on Chinese herbal medicine, plants, roots, bark and other substances were imported from China (or brought from other areas in Japan), collected in the Doshomachi quarter in Osaka, checked, and then distributed nationwide.

In 1722, 124 brokers of such medicinal ingredients received official permission to act as a trade association (kabunakama) - meaning they had a monopoly on the medicine trade in exchange for taxes. Of course, a practical reason was that these traders had built up enough expert knowledge to judge the quality of the ingredients (and recognize fake ones) and see to it that they were used in a proper way.


[Entrance to the Sukunahikona Shrine and Museum]

Dealing in Chinese medicine, these traders honored the Chinese Deity of Medicine, Shennong (Shinno in Japanese). Shennong ("Divine Farmer") is a culture hero and mythical figure who has been credited as the inventor of both agriculture and medicine (in the form of herbal drugs, the therapeutic understanding of pulse measurements, acupuncture, and moxibustion). In the Huainanzi he is said to have tasted hundreds of herbs to test their medical value - and in some traditions, he finally swallowed a poisonous plant and so died for the welfare of mankind. Shennong became the patron deity of farmers, rice traders, and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture. The most famous ancient book on agriculture and medicinal plants from China has also been ascribed to Shennong: the Shennong Bencao Jing ("Shennong's Materia Medica"), although in fact this is a compilation of oral traditions made between 300 BCE and 200 CE. The book describes 365 herbs and therapeutic substances, among which ginseng, linzhi mushrooms and ginger. Tea, seen as an antidote to poisonous herbs, is also described and Shennong so is also seen as the inventor of tea - a chance discovery, as tea leaves on burning tea twigs were carried by the hot air from the fire precisely to his cauldron of boiling water.


[Ingredients in a store of traditional medicine]

Later, Shennong was coupled with the Japanese deity of medicine, Sukuna-hikona. This deity, whose name means "Renowned Little Prince" appears in the Nihongi as the helper of Onamuchi no Mikoto, in "animating" the newly created land. He also set forth methods for healing illness among humans and their livestock, as well as magical ways of averting disasters. On top of that, he came to be regarded as the deity of curative springs (Onsen). In 1789 a shrine was built in the Doshomachi quarter, in which eventually both deities were enshrined. The popular name of the shrine is still "Shinno-san;" the official name is Sukunahikona Shrine.


[The Sukunahikona Shrine]

In 1822 a cholera epidemic hit Japan, brought into the country via Nagasaki, the only international port at the time. Also in Osaka, hundreds of people were dying every day. The medicine traders created medicine from tiger's bones and also made toy tigers from papier-mache as offering to Shinno and Sukuna-hikona. Although this undoubtedly did not help against the disease, it became customary to purchase a toy tiger (hariko) at the annual shrine festival in November as a prayer for good health.


[Votive plates with on top the two deities Sukunahikona (left)
and Shinno (right) and at the bottom the tiger]

In the Meiji period (1868-1912) Western medicine was introduced, first from the Netherlands. The Doshomachi merchants again acted as importers, although the monopoly of course was gone. A new phenomenon occurred: production of medicines was also started in the area, and the Osaka Pharmaceutical School was set up here. Some of the famous pharmaceutical companies that grew up in Osaka and are still headquartered in Doshomachi are: Takeda, Fujisawa, Kobayashi, Shionogi, Tanabe and Dainippon. There are 300 pharmaceutical wholesalers and manufacturers in the district, many also carrying out research. There are also several companies producing more traditional medicines, as Kaigen.


[A rare traditional building of a pharmaceutical company surviving in the area]

In the grounds of Sukunahikona Shrine (on the 3rd floor of the building housing the shrine office), one finds the Doshomachi Pharmaceutical and Historical Museum, which shows how the Doshomachi district has developed over the centuries. The museum possesses a large collection of valuable documents, but also advertising posters. One can watch several interesting videos as well. Unfortunately, the museum is only in Japanese.

At the entrance to the shrine is a plaque with a replica of the handwriting of the novelist Tanizaki Junichiro - his novella Shunkinsho (A Portrait of Shunkin, 1933) is set in this area.


[Tanizaki's Shunkinsho manuscript]


Address: 2-1-8 Dosho-machi, Chuo-ku, Osaka. TEL: 06-6231-6958   Hrs: 6:00 - 18:30. Both shrine and museum are free.   Access: 2 min. walk from Kitahama St. on the Sakaisuji Subway Line

Like in other countries, there have always been gangster films in Japan (a superb non-genre film is of course Drunken Angel by Kurosawa Akira, about the complex ties between a violent gangster and a doctor fond of the bottle), but the yakuza genre is typical for the Land of the Rising Sun. This genre only really got underway in the sixties, when the "ninkyo eiga" or "chivalry films" started being made. The hero in these movies is always a traditional yakuza who strictly observes the honor code and does not hurt outsiders. He wears kimono and fights with a sword in contrast to the "bad" modern yakuza who look like businessmen and carry pistols. The setting is in the Meiji-, Taisho- or early Showa-period. In the the drama, the hero is often torn between the contradictory values of giri (duty) and ninjo (personal feelings). The most popular actor in these films was the stoical Takakura Ken, often flanked by Tsuruta Koji or Ikebe Ryo. Countless of these films were produced by the Toei studios, replacing their samurai films which had been going strong in the 1950s. The 1960s were the heyday of the yakuza genre. Since these classical yakuza films later fell out of favor, they are now difficult to find, even in Japan.

After the demise of the ninkyo-film, the yakuza movie boom as such stopped, but there were three separate revivals. First, the "jitsuroku" or "docudrama" films devised in the early 1970s by Fukasaku Kinji in his five-film series Battles Without Honor and Humanity. These films were based on true stories, filmed with a hand camera in documentary style, and they portrayed the yakuza as they really are: ruthless, treacherous street thugs - as "unchivalrous" as possible. The films are also extremely violent. The "hero" is played by Sugawara Bunta - a cynical ex-soldier who just after WWII rises to power in the underworld of post-atomic bomb Hiroshima. Many "jitsuroku films" were produced - most yakuza films made today still belong to this genre - but without the genius of Fukasaku, this is mainly straight-to-video stuff.

The second revival came in the second half of the eighties when a series of films was made about the wives of gangster bosses. These films were also based on journalistic "true stories" and caught the popular fancy with a generous admixture of sex - an element which so far had been lacking in yakuza films. The star of these films was Iwashita Shima, as a tough and coolly elegant female gang boss stepping in for her husband (either in hospital, in prison, or in his grave). These films never made much impact in the West, but had a very strong following in Japan.

In the nineties, finally, there was a third revival, in the films of new directors as Kitano Takeshi and Miike Takeshi - to whom one might add Ishii Takashi and Mochizuki Rokuro. These latter-day productions were often direct-to-video releases (certainly in the case of Miike), meant for a small and specialized cult public. Even the films of Kitano Takeshi have never caused much of a ripple in Japan, in contrast to the praise they received at the film festival circuit outside its borders. They are a strange mix of static boredom and sudden, ultra-violent scenes. The typical actors are Kitano Takeshi himself, as well as Ishibashi Ryo, Takeuchi Riki and Aikawa Sho. The last three actors also often appear in films of the other three directors. This third revival, by now, has died a silent dead as well.

[Poster of "Branded to Kill" from Wikipedia]

Here are 10 yakuza films you must see under threat of loosing your little finger:
Tough Guy (Akumyo, 1961; Lit. "Bad Reputation") by Tanaka Tokuzo and with Katsu Shintaro, Tamiya Jiro and Nakamura Tamao. This series was started in 1961 by the Daiei studios, well before Toei began making its "ninkyo" films. Based on a popular serial novel by Kon Toko, it features Katsu Shintaro as Asakichi, a rough and ready young thug with a peasant background who easily gets into fist fights, although he is chivalrous at heart. The handsome but dry Tamiya Jiro plays his sidekick (kobun) "Motor" Sada, as the studio didn't believe Katsu Shintaro alone was enough of a leading man type. But Katsu's enormous vitality propelled him to stardom. The series saw 16 installments until 1974 and probably gave the studio the courage to have Katsu Shintaro star on his own in another series, the chanbara films about the blind swordsman Zatoichi. These last films are now more famous outside Japan, but in the 1960s both series were equally popular. Different from the heroes in the later Toei ninkyo films, hot-headed Asakichi frequently gets into trouble with women. In this first film he rescues Kototoi, a geisha from the Matsushima yukaku, with whom he has fallen in love, from Innoshima Island in the Inland Sea, where she has been sold. This brings him into conflict with the local gang of Silk Hat, but a tough female boss helps him. However, back in Osaka there is another girlfriend who claims to be his wife, so things are not that easily settled. Production values of this color film are high, as is usual for Daiei. (7.5) Pale Flower (Kawaita Hana, 1964; Lit. "Withered Flower") by Shinoda Masahiro and with Ikebe Ryo, Kaga Mariko and Fujiki Takashi. Beautiful authorist art film with a strongly nihilistic tone made at Shochiku. Ikebe Ryo plays Muraki, a misanthropic, world-weary yakuza gangster just released from prison. Previously, he has killed a gangster from a rival gang, with whom his boss now has formed an alliance, so he feels rather out of place. In one of his old gambling haunts he meets Saeko (Kaga Mariko), a young upper-class child-woman who seeks thrills by gambling on high stakes and driving madly fast in her sporty convertible. Muraki introduces her to a new high-stakes gambling joint but gradually looses control over her. One of his worries is Yoh, a drug-addict with the cold eyes of a killer, who stalks her without ever saying a single word. But Muraki never pries into who she is, the relationship seems almost Platonic. When Muraki finally accepts another killing assignment, he takes Saeko along for the thrill. The final killing is filmed like a religious sacrifice and brings Muraki where he was at the beginning of the film: in jail, where he finally learns of Saeko's death. Life has nothing to offer him, but he already knew that, too, in the beginning. This existential noir film is shot in stark black-and-white, in a mostly night-time Yokohama, with an atonal score by Takemitsu Toru. (9) Abashiri Prison (also called "A Man from Abashiri Prison;"Abashiri Bangaichi, 1965) by Ishii Teruo and with Takakura Ken, Nanbara Koji, Tanaka Kunie and Tanba Tetsuro. The popularity of Toei Ninkyo films in the 1960s rested on five "cash-cow" series, of which three featured Takakura Ken. This is the first one, very popular in Japan even today, but little known outside its borders. Takakura Ken was introduced in this film as the noble yakuza hero - you still see him working on his character. The prison was a very notorious real one, Japan's Alcatraz, located in Abashiri, in the wilds of the northernmost island of Hokkaido - it now is a popular prison museum. Maverick director Ishii Teruo helmed the first ten films of the series, after which other directors took over for another eight films. The story is simple: Takakura Ken plays a convicted yakuza, Tsukibana Shinichi, who despite nearing the end of his prison term, escapes to visit his ailing mother (a motivation typical of the sixties, when mothers were the most important women in the lives of screen "ninkyo" yakuza). Tanba Tetsuro plays a prison warden who believed in Tsukibana's character, but after being disappointed, chases him relentlessly. In a breath-taking sequence, Takakura Ken flees handcuffed to another convict in a railway handcar hurling down a steep mountain. Next, the escaped convicts trek across the desolate snow country of Hokkaido, affording the director the opportunity to show us some great vistas. (8) Account of the Chivalrous Commoners of Japan: Osaka (Nihon Kyokyakuden: Naniwahen, 1965) by Makino Masahiro and with Takakura Ken and Tsuruta Koji. The most typical ninkyo series of the sixties, and the second one with Takakura Ken, unfortunately little known outside Japan. This is the second installment of eleven, running from 1964 to 1971, and often thought to be the best. The story is set among transport companies in Osaka port, where honest workers are threatened by cheating gangsters. Takakura Ken plays a yakuza who upholds the traditional ninkyo code and selflessly sides with the workers. Besides the feuding gangs, we have two stories of doomed romance, which give the film additional interest. On top of that, a young woman who keeps an outside stall falls in love with Takakura Ken, but this is only played for laughs as a true yakuza is not interested in women (he is shy and she only giggles). Before the final showdown, the film contains several of the large action scenes for which Makino was famous. Yachigusa Kaoru has a nice role as a flirtatious geisha. The film reaffirms the status quo, in typical "ninkyo" manner: the Japanese way as exemplified by the common people is basically good and fills us with warm feelings; the bad gangsters who disturb the normal, harmonious relations are duly punished. A third series with Takakura Ken, now flanked by Ikebe Ryo, and with a setup-up very similar to Nihon Kyokyakuden was Remnants of Chivalry in the Showa Era (Showa Zankyoden), which saw nine entries between 1965 to 1972. The only difference is that the stories are set in the more modern Showa-period in which chivalry was getting an even rarer item and that Ikebe Ryo always dies in the ultra-violent finale. And here, too, Makino Masahiro was the major director. (8) Branded to Kill (Koroshi no Rakuin, 1967) by Suzuki Seijun and with Joe Shishido, Nanbara Koji, Mari Annu and Ogawa Mariko. Suzuki Seijun was thirty years in advance of his time - he made satirical, grand-guignol yakuza films in the days of the straight-laced ninkyo flics. No wonder he was fired by his studio after the present film - which today is considered as one of Japan's most important cult films. It is difficult to make sense of this wild ride through the bypaths and alleys of the yakuza genre, but it is enough just to enjoy the visiuals. Joe Shishido plays a yakuza assassin who has two problems: he wants to reach the top of his profession, but is stuck in the position of "number 3" killer, without even knowing who is "number 1." And he has a problem with women: his loony wife despises him but is mad for sex, and an icily cold, mysterious woman who is eager for death and surrounds herself with dead butterflies, becomes an obsession for him. On top of that, he needs to sniff boiled rice as a turn-on... There is one very stark scene: a butterfly lands on the gun of our killer, just as he is about to pull the trigger. A sign of peace? No, he misses and instead hits an innocent bystander... A brilliant. modernist masterpiece. (9) Red Peony Gambler: Flower Cards Match (Hibotan Bakuto: Hanafuda Shobu, 1969) by Kato Tai and with Fuji Junko, Takakura Ken and Wakayama Tomisaburo. This was a highly popular series, running to eight installments, with actress Fuji Junko (Sumiko Fuji after her marriage) in the main role of the knife-wielding female yakuza Oryu, a wandering gambler. Takakura Ken plays a wandering gangster who joins forces with her. Oryu lodges with the Nishinomaru gang which is vying with the Kanahara-gumi for a lucrative gambling concession that raises money for the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya. To complicate matters, in a true gangland "Romeo and Julia" story, the son of the Nishinomaru boss is in love with the daughter of the Kanahara-gumi leader. Oryu helps them flee to Osaka and in the end takes on the whole Kanaharu gang. An interesting scene is the first one, where Oryu saves a young girl from an onrushing train - director Kato Tai demonstrates his skill here in some rapid, Eisenstein-style cutting. Culturally interesting is another scene at the beginning, where Oryu first arrives at the headquarters of the Nishinomaru gang and in an elaborate greeting in stilted Japanese asks for their hospitality as "kyakubun." This is a faithful representation of a typical yakuza ritual. But the top attraction of these films is the alluring Fuji Junko who wears an immaculate kimono and has perfectly polite manners, but who also possesses nerves of steel and can kill in the blink of an eye. Besides that, she has a warm humanity as shown in this installment. (8.5) Battles Without Honor and Humanity (Jingi Naki Tatakai, 1973) by Fukasaku Kinji and with Sugawara Bunta, Matsukata Hiroki and Tanaka Kunie. The yakuza as just a gang of violent mobsters, without an inkling of chivalry - the ninkyo-code is trampled in the mud here. Based on a magazine series about the life of a gang boss from Kure (near Hiroshima) in the chaotic years just after WWII. Fukasaku filmed the realities of the postwar world, of angry ex-soldiers turned gangsters and black marketeers taking on the Japanese cops and the GIs - with as only values those of the street. He used handheld cameras, frequent zoom-ups and natural light to give a gritty and authentic look to the film. The violence is extreme and sudden, and not cartoonish but brutal and shocking. At the same time, Fukasaku emphasizes the absurdity of the Hiroshima gang wars. The series, which starred Sugawara Bunta, became a great hit. Fukasaku made five installments. The plot is so insanely complicated and fast moving, that I will not try to reproduce it here! The director created a new type of yakuza movie that is in a way still with us, for ever burying the ninkyo-style flics. (8) The Yakuza Wives (Gokudo no Onnatachi, 1986) by Gosha Hideo and with Iwashita Shima and Katase Rina. Based on a reportage by journalist Ieda Shoko, who demonstrated that the women in the yakuza world were strong personalities with nerves of steel. Iwashita Shima (the wife of director Shinoda Masahiro) was a golden choice for the gang-boss wife, cool and steely, but also elegant and stately. And Katase Rina provides a perfect contrast as her softer and more voluptuous younger sister - she attracts men as honey does flies, and one of her admirers is a vile, low-life yakuza which leads to problems as her sister wants to keep her out of gang-life. A highlight of the film is the cat fight between both women, and there is plenty of other action as well. Iwashita Shima rules the mob like a business imperium, but just in case also hides a gun under her kimono. And woe to who opposes her, he may find his house bulldozed at night! This first film still has the feel of the reportage on which it was based, which adds to authenticity. In later installments it would peter out into a yakuza sopa opera. By the way, the "gokudo" of the Japanese title refers to "the extreme way," i.e. gangsters and gangs. (7.5)  Sonatine (1993) by Kitano Takeshi and with Kitano Takeshi and Kokumai Aya. While the whole yakuza genre is quite nihilistic, this is probably the most empty and negative gangster film ever made, the most perfect example of the minimalist style of director Kitano Takeshi. Stone-faced Kitano (the director also plays the lead role, as usual in his films) plays a world-weary yakuza, who is already spiritually dead before he commits suicide in the last reel. He is tired of living and wouldn't mind dying, "as that at least would end his fear of death." He is a blot of emptiness at the center of film. The set-up is a familiar yakuza turf war, in which Kitano and his men - though outgunned - face certain deaths by counterattacking. There is no real narrative: what we get is a depiction of the numbing boredom and emptiness of yakuza life - always hanging around and killing time, just like in that other male macho institute, the army. Stalled on a beach in Okinawa, the gangsters in their Hawaiian shirts drink beer and play silly games - until Kitano turns the tables by introducing some serious Russian roulette. There is some comedy thanks to Kitano's inventive and funny mind, but most jokes suffocate in the cruelty which is at their basis. There is little gore, but violence flashes up like a lightning bolt, out of the blue - just as in real life. An unconventional, original vision, not in the last place through the film making with its consciously jerky editing. (8) Fudoh: The New Generation (Gokudo Sengokushi Fudo, 1996) by Miike Takashi and with Tanihara Shosuke, Takano Kenji and Jinno Marie. One of the most outrageous productions of provocateur Miike, about a generational conflict in a Kyushu yakuza gang. The father has killed the transgressing eldest son and sent his neatly boxed head to the bosses of a rival gang to appease them. Some years later, the younger son who is out for revenge has already set up a shadow gang within his high school, using 11-year olds with pistols hidden inside teddy bears. Fudoh is one of the most exuberant and over-the-top films Miike ever made. There is not a second of seriousness in its cartoonish reels. It all starts with a battle in a public toilet where 10,000 rounds of munition are fired making Sam Peckinpah look like kindergarten stuff. Some other delicious outrages are: a yakuza poisoned by some bad coffee and turning into a human blood geyser, or a schoolgirl assassin who fires poisoned darts from between her legs with lethal precision (as an interesting inquiry into the link between sex and death). Not to forget a hermaphroditic love scene, soccer with a hacked-off head, and a lovely English teacher in the most "sexploitational" skimpy outfit you have ever seen. This is one fest of macabre humor, and a demented, mayhem parody of the yakuza genre. (8)

The Gion Shrine in Kobe stands north of an area called Hirano (which itself lies due north of Kobe Station on he JR line), where the road forms a pass into the mountains. As the name indicates, it is linked to Kyoto's Gion, the Yasaka Shrine. As a small shrine standing within walking distance from where I live in Kobe, this year I visited the Gion Shrine for a "nonbiri" Hatsumode. The shrine's history is as follows. When in 869 Kyoto was troubled by an epidemic, soothsayers in those unashamedly superstitious days decided that was caused by angry spirits that could only be subdued by the deity Susanoo. Susanoo happened to be honored in the Hiromine Shrine in Himeji and his "split-off spirit" (bunrei, from flame to flame) was brought to Kyoto where it was housed in the Tokoji temple (now the Yasaka Shrine of Gion fame). On the way to Kyoto, the spirit of Susanoo spent the night in Kobe, in the area called Hirano that belonged to a priest, Tojobo, who was connected to Enkyoji temple in Himeji (which was again linked to the Hiromine Shrine of Susanoo). That became the origin of the present shrine. Networks are as old as the world. It is a nice place, with a good view over Kobe. There is not much to see, but the steep staircase leading up to the shrine provides a good exercise and the Gion Shrine also has a nice summer festival (13-20 July).

In Western culture the snake is the great seducer: in the paradise story, it is the snake that entices Eva to take a bite from the forbidden apple, leading to the Fall. And in the Gilgamesh epos, it is a snake who steals immortality from Gilgamesh. But besides being a symbol of evil - and even Satan - , the snake is also a symbol of fertility and regeneration - because it can shed its skin. The Sumerian fertility god Ningizzida - who also became the god of healing - was depicted as a serpent with a human head. And as is well known, the Greek medicine god Asclepius carried a serpent-entwined staff.

In Asia, the snake was close to the divine dragon. In Indian mythology we have the Nagas, great dragon-like serpents, who possessed many magical powers and guarded great treasures. In Buddhism, Nagas were believed to be both water-dwellers, living in streams, and earth-dwellers, living in underground caverns. They also guarded Mt. Sumeru, the Axis Mundi. In the legend of the Buddha's life we encounter a naga called Mucalinda - when Sakyamuni sat meditating under the Bodhi tree, a heavy rain started and Mucalinda with his seven snake heads formed a sort of umbrella above the Buddha's head to protect him from the elements.


In Japan, the serpent is especially associated with the syncretic Benzaiten, the goddess of everything that flows: water, words, and music. She is the main deity of the shrines on islands as Enoshima and Chikubushima and is often represented with a snake coiled around the rock on which she is seated. In Japanese legend, the snake is also a symbol of a woman's jealousy: in the famous story about Kiyohime, the jealous woman transforms herself into a serpent and coils around the temple bell in which her fugitive lover has hidden, literally "frying" him with her passion.

Perhaps because of the "Naga treasures," the snake is also associated with money and profit - on New year cards we often find it accompanied by gold coins.

 Japan knows many snakes (as anybody who has hiked in Japan's forests can attest to); they are an ingredient in traditional medicine. Dangerous is the mamushi, the pitviper, whose bite leads to several deaths each year (another venomous snake is the habu, found on Okinawa).

The Year of the Snake is associated with the earthly branch symbol 巳 (mi), and this is how it is written on New Year's cards.

The Kitamura Museum in Kyoto, close to Demachi-yanagi, houses a prominent collection of tea ceremony art brought together by businessman and tea aesthete Kitamura Kinjiro. It consists of about 1,000 objects, among which fourteen “Important Cultural Properties.” Parts of the collection are shown in two thematic exhibitions a year, in spring and autumn.


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You enter the museum via an outside staircase on the second floor and then have to go one floor higher for the exhibition room. Here you will find a beautiful display of about fifty items. The collection is of high value, with for example the "Teabowl with pampas grass design in overglaze enamels" by Ninsei or the "Yellow Seto teabowl called Karakoromo." There are also pieces of calligraphy and small scrolls and excellent lacquerware.

The museum exudes the quiet atmosphere of the tea ceremony.
Kitamura BijutsukanTel: 075-256-0637  Hours: 10:00-16:00 (only open Mar to Jun and Sep to Dec); CL Mon (except NH), day after NH, BE; ¥600   Access: From Kyoto St take city bus 4 or 17 to Kawaramachi-Imadegawa; or 5 min on foot from Demachi-Yanagi St on the Keihan railway line

The Ukimido or Foating Hall of Katata (Otsu City, near Kyoto) is a temple with a large garden at the boards of Lake Biwa, far enough removed from the town to grant a superb view of the lake. The Floating Hall has been built over the water and indeed, when you sit down on the planks of the veranda on the lakeside, you really seem to float on the water. It is like sitting in a big boat...

[The Floating Hall] ***  turn the key let in the moon Floating Hall
kagi akete | tsuki sashiire yo | Ukimido
Basho ***
Not surprisingly, Ukimido was popular with writers and artists and also whas been counted as one of the Eight Scenes of Omi (eight beautiful spots on Lake Biwa) as ukiyo-e by Hiroshige and others demonstrate. The scene featuring Ukimido is called Geese Alighting at Katata and usually shows the Floating Hall in the light of the late sun.


The temple is officially called Mangetsuji (Full Moon Temple) and is entered via an impressive "Dragon Gate." Ukimido was originally founded in 995 by the priest Genshin from nearby Mt Hiei. The Thousand-Buddha Hall (all Amida statues) stands at the spot where lake Biwa is at its narrowest and served as prayer for the safety of ships on the Lake - or so it must have started. The present structures are modern.


***  connect Mt Hira and Mt Mikami by snow bridge of herons
Hira Mikami | yuki sashi watase | sagi no hashi
Basho ***
Bashi was from the winter of 1690 to the spring of the following year in Otsu.

***  early summer rains dripping and dripping Floating Hall
samidare no | ametare bakari | Ukimido
Awano Seiho
*** 

Abe Kobo (1924-93) is best known for The Woman in the Dunes and the film based on it by Teshigahara. To me, this superb novel is indeed the crown on his work, but also in other novels, stories and plays Abe has engaged in surreal and nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society. The usual comparisons to Kafka (and Beckett) are unavoidable, although, interestingly enough, Japanese commentators in the past used to emphasize the Marxist political dimension of his work - a side which to me is happily invisible. Reducing Abe's work that addresses the general human condition to the mere political is in fact absurd.

Since the 1970s, three collections of English translations of Abe's short stories have seen the light of day, the last one being Beyond the Curve (1991) by Juliet Winters Carpenter. I have also a collection of five stories in a Dutch translation, and it seems there were translations in many other languages as well, although most of that is now out of print. Writers have their seasons and that of Abe Kobo seems a bit past - something which enables us to have a more objective look at his real achievement. So here are first the short stories, like the novels a subtle merging of real and surreal events. An ordinary individual is suddenly placed  into extraordinary, often nightmarish circumstances that lead him to question his identity.

Here are remarks on a number of the stories:

"Red Cocoon" (1950; not in Beyond the Curve, but in my Dutch collection; it has also been translated in The Showa Anthology, 1985) is one of Abe's earliest stories which already contains the idea of alienated man that we find in his later fiction. A homeless man is wondering why he has no home. Or does he have a home and has he forgotten it? He happens to pull on a bit of silk thread hanging from his shoe and ends up unraveling his leg, then his whole body. The thread forms a cocoon around him, until his body has completely been unraveled. "I have a house now," says the man, "but there is no one left to come home to it." Alienated man seeking for a place in society has lost himself in the process.

This can also be linked to Abe's own rootlessness. He was born in Tokyo, but grew up in Manchuria, while his family came originally from Hokkaido. Abe always felt he had no real place of origin. That could also be the reason his fiction has such an international quality: it is mostly devoid of typical Japaneseness, and not linked to any specific cultural location. In that respect Abe Kobo resembles Murakami Haruki.

In "Dendrocacalia" (1949) a bewildered man called Common discovers he is turning into a rare plant; he eventually ends up in a botanical garden. The director of the Botanical Garden is called K. I was not convinced by this story - all the references to Kafka only serve to show that Kafka's Metamorphosis is many times better!

Only part of "The Crime of Mr. S. Karma" (1951) has been translated in Beyond the Curve - which is a pity as it is quite interesting: the "crime" is that Mr S. Karma lets his name cards (meishi) get away from him and take over his personality. Without cards he has no name or identity, no self, he is hollow inside - a predicament that shows how much Japanese businessmen rely on their business cards.

"Intruders" (1951) is the only political story: a salaryman living alone in a small apartment is visited by complete strangers, a large family with grown-up sons and a daughter, who take over his apartment and his life. They use his money and he has to wait on them as their servant. They even steal his girlfriend. Although they behave very dictatorially, everything is decided "democratically" by the majority. This is a satire of the American occupation of Japan; in his play "Friends" Abe later would remove the anti-American satire and write a  more general piece about the human condition.

"Beguiled" (1957) is a very clever story. Two man confront each other in the waiting room of a small station, one the pursuer, the other the pursued... but which is which? In the end, one of them is led back to the lunatic asylum from which he escaped.

"The Dream Soldier" (1957) is a moving, straightforward story about an old police officer guarding a village during war time. An army unit is exercising in the snow and a deserter is on the loose. When the villagers find him, he has already committed suicide - it is the son of the old officer. Thanks to the subdued and indirect way of narration, this is a small masterpiece - the best story I know by Abe Kobo.

In "The Bet" (1960) an architect for a demanding advertising company discovers a bizarre building with doors and stairs that lead not to other spaces but to red lights and slogans. It is a satire on the efficiency of a modern company. The contest is to decide where the President should have his room. The architect finally designs "the path of the president's office as a mathematical function of the System."

In "An Irrelevant Death" (1961), a man returns home from work to find a murdered man he doesn't know in his apartment. He contemplates ways how to get rid of the unexplained and unpleasant body without incurring suspicion, but everything he does seems to implicate him more and more in the crime.

In "Beyond the Curve" (1966) a man with amnesia tries to remember his past, which exists just beyond the curve of his mind - and is symbolized by the fact that he can't remember what is beyond the curve of the road he is walking on. He has no identity, he even has no business cards in his wallet. When a woman working in a coffee restaurant recognizes him, he still fails to remember who he is and he can only try to cover up his ignorance while waiting for his memory to come back.

7 points out of 10. To me, the best story is "Dream Soldier," the only realistic one, and the simplest one. Other good ones are "An Irrelevant Death," "Beyond the Curve," and "Beguiled." Beyond the Curve is unfortunately out of print, but can still be found second-hand or in libraries. 

Nagano, the capital city of the mountainous prefecture of the same name, is - in contrast to most other prefectural capitals - not a former castle town. Instead of being an administrative center, in the past it was a religious magnet that drew worshippers from the whole of Japan to the famous Zenkoji Temple. The city grew up as a service center catering to the needs of pilgrims and priests. The core of Nagano therefore was Zenkoji and that is still the place where all visitors head to.
to the Unveiling
even sparrows come
with the whole family

Kaicho ni | au ya suzume mo | oyako tsure

Issa


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Zenkoji is famous for a secret statue, an Amida Triad, to which various magnificent powers are ascribed. Some of the miracles it wrought in the past can be seen depicted on the ema votive plates in the temple museum. The statue is so secret that it is never shown and even a copy is only displayed once every seven years, in a great ceremony that is called the Unveiling (Gokaicho). Issa, who was born in Kashiwabara north of Nagano and spent the last part of his life again in his hometown, lived about half a day's walking from Zenkoji and must often have visited when there were important ceremonies. He was a Jodo Shin Buddhist who believed in the "Other Power" (Tariki) of the Buddha Amida, the Buddha of the Western Paradise. In this haiku, he comments humourously on the popularity of the Unveiling - not only humans, but even sparrows visit with their children!



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spring wind -
pulled by an ox
Zenkoji

haru kaze ya | ushi ni hikarete | Zenkoji

Issa There are many legends about Zenkoji and one of them tells about a stingy woman who refused to believe in the Amida. One day, when she was washing silk at the river, an ox speared one of her precious scarfs on its horns and ran away. The woman went after him, in hot pursuit, running day and night. In the end, she found herself inside Zenkoji Temple where she saw a Kannon statue carrying her scarf... the statue had transformed itself into an ox. This display of religious power so impressed the woman that she became a convert and gave up het stingy way of life. Symbolically, the story shows how the Amida of Zenkoji "pulls" believers from everywhere to the great temple.
Both this haiku and the previous one have been engraved on a stone standing in the park to the right of the temple, on the way to the Shinano Art Museum and beautiful Higashiyama kaii Gallery.

There is not much to see in literature museums, but in the case of the Kamakura Museum of Literature you come for the great house and spacious garden. A Western-style villa right in the middle of the old warrior capital! The art deco manor was built in 1936 by the Maeda family, who had been the feudal rulers of the rich fief of Kaga, now Ishikawa prefecture with capital Kanazawa.

Many famous politicians used to come here, as prime ministers Eisaku Sato (after retirement he spent his weekends here) and Shigeru Yoshida. The house also figures in Yukio Mishima's novel Spring Snow. It was donated to Kamakura City in 1983 and after renovation became a literature museum.

[Photo from Wikipedia]
That is not such a strange choice, as Kamakura has deep ties with Japanese literature. Kamakura already appears in the ancient poetry anthology Manyoshu. It also feautures in the Tale of Heike and other war literature, as well as in travelogues of the Middle Ages. One of the most important Kamakura poets was the Minamoto shogun Sanetomo, whose work has been collected in the Kinkai Wakashu after he was murdered on the stairs of the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine in 1219.

Modern authors were attracted by the shrines and temples of Kamakura. Some, as Natsume Soseki, came to practice Zen meditation; he also situated his novel Kokoro in Kamakura. The haiku poet Takahama Kyoshi lived in Kamakura as well. Others came here to spend the summer, for recuperation, or to visit the charming vestiges of the old capital.

The most notable modern author who resided in Kamakura is of course Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari. Kawabata also situated important novels as Thousand Cranes and The Sound of the Mountain in the historical town. In addition, filmmaker Ozu made several of his postwar films here, marvelously capturing the sleepy, residential atmosphere; Ozu is buried in Engakuji Temple (see here for directions).

The display in the beautiful house consists of manuscripts and photographs. Most interesting is perhaps the large garden, which has azaleas, roses and a lawn, that slopes down the hill. When you stand on the terrace of the house, you see the green grass of the lawn and immediately behind that, Yuigahama beach. The town is blotted out. It is as if you live in the clouds, far above the hustle and bustle of ordinary life, like all those Maeda marquises and politicians did.
Tel: 0467-23-3911

Hrs: 9:00-16:00. CL Mon.

Access: 7-min walk from Yuigahama St on the Enoden Line.

Note: Account of a visit to an Ozu exhibition in the Kamakura Museum of Literature.

The author Shiga Naoya (1883-1971) often moved house, but he lived for nine years in Nara, where he designed and built his own house. That house is now a museum and stands in Takabatake, at the foot of Mt Wakakusa and Mt Kasuga. Shiga lived here from 1929 to 1938.

[Shiga Naoya's House]
Shiga was born into an ex-samurai family of Tohoku, but grew up in Tokyo where his father was a banker. His family was so well-off that Shiga always had the security of money, although the fact that he went his own way and became a writer led to a long quarrel with his father.

[The sun room]
Shiga Naoya wrote relatively little: one novel (A Dark Night's Passing), one novella (Reconciliation) and about 60 short stories. For Shiga, writing was a spiritual exercise, and once he acquired the necessary tranquility, he stopped writing. There was also no financial necessity to work, as we have seen.

[View from the bedroom]
Shiga mostly found his subject matter in his autobiography. He disliked plot as "too fabricated" and gives us realistic and psychologically insightful vignettes from daily life. But although nothing seems to happen in his stories, the protagonists always come out of them as transformed persons. Shiga has often been misunderstood by Western commentators who disliked his lack of plot. But in Japan he has always had a very high status: especially the perfection and sincerity of his prose style are highly praised.

  [The garden]
Shiga's Nara residence is in mixed Japanese-Western style, a sprawling structure with a large garden. The front garden is in classical Japanese style, the garden at the back features a large lawn. It is a comfortable house, a house built by someone with taste. What I likes most was the Sun Room, a sort of conservatory, with comfortable chairs and a glass window in the ceiling.
Tel: 0742-26-6490
Hours: 9:30-17:30 (in winter: 16:30)
Entrance Fee: 350 yen
Access: 10 min walk east from the Wari-ishi bus stop on the Nara Shinai Junkan line

If you drop the Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature on your foot, you will end up in a plaster bandage. Physically, it is not a pleasure to read such a brick - I have the paperback edition that already starts cracking at the spine in the middle.

But the main question is: is this a good anthology? This is a tricky question because there could be as many anthologies as readers - everyone has his or her own preferences. I am not going to talk about authors who have been unjustly excluded or included, because that is too personal. But there are some objective markers as well.

One of these: Does the anthology offer a new view of modern Japanese literature?

My answer is: not really, this Columbia Anthology does not offer a new perspective. It is again an all-too-familiar anthology of mainly prose fiction. That ties in with the Western 19th-20th century view of literature as mostly prose fictional narrative. Some poetry and drama has been included, but in number of pages really very little. One of the poetic giants of Meiji literature, Masaoka Shiki, gets only two pages…

Therefore the book does not do justice to the Japanese tradition, also not of the late 19th c. and first half of the 20th c. treated in this anthology.

In Japan and China, lyrical poetry and short prose forms other than fiction (in Japan called zuihitsu and nikki) have always been of great importance as literature. (Besides that, they have of course also greatly influenced narrative fiction in Japan). What I almost completely miss are these short prose forms.

Where is the Romaji Diary of Takuboku? Why has not one of the uta-nikki, poetry diaries of Shiki been included, for example “One drop of Ink”? What about the diaries and zuihitsu of Kafu, for example Hiyori-geta or "Tidings from Okubo"? What about the essays and literary criticism of Tanizaki, for example a new translation of "In Praise of Shadows"? What about the diaries of Santoka? Why is the Tono Monogatari not included as this is certainly also great literature?
A really excellent anthology, doing justice to all in Japan important genres of literature would have to consist of five parts, in separate volumes:

1. Narrative Prose (prose fictional narrative)
2. Essays, diaries and letters (zuihitsu, nikki and other non-fictional literary prose)
3. Lyrical poetry (also including complete collections as Midaregami)
4. Drama and film scripts (Ozu, Kurosawa!)
5. Literary theory and criticism

Let's start thinking and puzzling about what to include!

Large numbers in Japan are difficult as you do not count in units of thousand, but rather in units of ten thousand (with different names for those units the higher you get):

1 = ichi (一、one)
10 = ju (十、ten)
100 = hyaku (百、one hundred)
1,000 = (is)sen (千、one thousand)
10,000 = (ichi)man (万、ten thousand). You can also write 4man, or 4.5 man=45,000
100,000 = ju-man (hundred thousand) - ten man or 10 x 10,000 = 100,000
1,000,000 = hyaku man (one million) - hundred man or 100 x 10,000 = 1,000,000
10,000,000 = (is)sen man (ten million) - one thousand man or 1,000 x 10,000 = 10,000,000
100,000,000 = (ichi) oku (億、hundred million). Again you can say 4 oku or 4.5 oku = 450,000,000
1,000,000,000 = ju oku (one billion; in Europe people call this "milliard") - ten oku or 10 X 100,000,000
10,000,000,000 = hyaku oku (ten billion) - one hundred oku or 100 x 100,000,000
100,000,000,000 = sen oku (thousand billion) - one thousand oku or 1,000 x 100,000,000
1,000,000,000,000 = (it)cho (兆、one trillion; in Europe people call this "billion"!). Again you can say 4 cho or 4.5 cho = 4,500,000,000,000
10,000,000,000,000 = ju cho (ten trillion).
100,000,000,000,000 = hyaku cho (hundred trillion)
1,000,000,000,000,000 = sen cho (quadrillion; in Europe people call this "billiard")

We could go even higher (the next unit coming up is called "kei"　（京）, a one with 16 zero's or 10 quadrillion), but in practical use cho is the highest counting unit. But you see the changes with myriads and not thousands:　1 followed by four zeros is man, 8 zeros oku, twelve zeros cho, and 16 zeros kei etc.

So when you see "92 cho 2694 oku" it is 92,269,400,000,000 etc. Here the counting is clearly in "man" units, therefore you have four digits in front of the "oku". The US GDP is (in yen) 1401 cho 7171 oku = 1,401,717,100,000,000. Mindbogglingly large figures...

Sept. 2, Kyoto: Hassaku Festival at Matsunoo Shrine 
Prayer for a good harvest. Nenbutsu dance at 16:00.
Kyoto City Bus 28 to Matsuo Taisha; or Matsuo St on the Hankyu Arashiyama line.

Sept. 9, nationwide: Choyo no Sekku
Chrysanthemum festival. 

Sept. 9, Kyoto: Karasu Sumo Wrestling and Choyo Ceremony at Kamigamo Shrine 
Shrine priests imitate the voice of crows and their manner of jumping, after which local children compete in the shrine's annual Karasu Sumo wrestling event for the entertainment of the Kami (from 10:00). 
Kyoto City Bus 4 or 46 to Kamigamo-jinja-mae

Sept. 15-17, Kyoto: Seiryu-e Festival of Kiyomizu Temple
Rite of the Blue Dragon who is a reincarnation of the temple’s main statue, Kannon, and comes to drink every night at the Otowa no taki waterfall in the temple precincts. A large dragon (made washi paper) is carried around, while monks blow horagai horns (from 14:00).  
Kyoto City Bus 206 to Kiyomizu-michi

Sept. 14-16, Kamakura: Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Matsuri
Festival of Kamakura's major shrine. Yabusame (archery on horseback) on Sept. 16.
10 min walk from JR Kamakura St

Sept. 15-16, Kishiwada (Osaka): Danjiri Matsuri
Danjiri festival of Kishiwada, south of Osaka. Fight between large floats crashing into each other, while young men waving fans balance themselves on the roofs of the floats.
30 min south from Namba St (Osaka) on the Nankai line.

Sept. 15-16, Tokyo: Annual Festival of the Nezu Shrine
Chiyoda Subway to Nezu St. or Sendagi St.

Sept. 18, Kamakura: Menkake Gyoretsu, Goryo Shrine
Procession of people wearing grotesque masks from the Goryo Shrine to Gokurakuji Temple (from 13:30). Based on a legend that Yoritomo had affair with outcast girl whom he visited accompanied by masked men to hide his identity. The masks are antique pieces from the mid 18th c.
5 min by the Enoden Line from Kamakura St. to Hase St., then walk 3 min

Sept. 21-22, Kyoto: Annual festival of the Seimei Shrine
Mikoshi parade from 13:00 on the 22nd.
20 min. by bus 9 from Kyoto St. to Ichijo-Modoribashi Seimei Jinja-mae Bus Stop

Sept. 23, nationwide: Autumnal Equinox Day
Higan, visiting the family graves.

Sept. 24, Kyoto: Comb Festival at Yasui Konpiragu Shrine
Offering of thanks to women's combs and hair ornaments (from 13:00). Procession of women with various historical hairstyles. 
Kyoto City Bus 206 to Higashiyama Yasui.

Sept. 28-30, Kyoto: Kangetsu no Yube, Daikakuji
Moonviewing party (from 17:00-). Dragon boats sail on Osawa Pond as in Heian times for this festival of the harvest moon.
One hour by City Bus 28 or Kyoto Bus 71, 74 or 81 from Kyoto St. to Daikaku-ji Bus Stop.

Sept. 30, Nara: Uneme Festival
Procession of Hanaguruma from JR Nara St to Sarusawa Pond from 17:00. Boats and gagaku on Sarusawa Pond from 19:00-19:30. 
5 min. from Kintetsu Nara St.; 10 min. from JR Nara St.

The traditional poetic name for August is Hazuki, "Leaf Month," as leaves are supposed to start falling - Risshu, the "Beginning of Autumn," comes around August 7 or 8. As the heat is at its greatest around this time, sultry and sweltering, it seems more a case of wishful thinking! But in Chinese philosophy, when Yang is at its highest, it already contains an element of Yin that from then on will grow, so it seems suitable - and thinking about autumn may actually bring some coolness. The name for the "lingering heat" after Risshu is "zansho," and this generally continues until early September.



The greatest national festival of August is the traditional, Buddhist-folkloric Bon Festival, held from 13 to 16 August (see my post about Obon). The festival itself takes place on August 15. Obon is the festival to honor the souls of the ancestors, who are supposed to return to their old homes and partake of offerings for a few days during this period. The festival starts with on Obon market around August 10. Here flowers and other decorations for the event are sold - a good place to see this market in Kyoto is near Rokuharamitsuji Temple. After the ancestors have been regaled with fruits, sweets, cakes, vegetables and flowers, and after a Buddhist service has been held at the home altar (often a Buddhist priest comes by for this), they are sent off again to their dark abode. Lanterns and small bonfires are lit to show them the way back to the netherworld (and these bonfires can take on a gigantic shape as in Kyoto on August 16).

Traditionally, Obon also is a time of family reunions as the living family members will return to their hometowns (now less so, as Obon has also become the period to take summer holidays and many Japanese travel abroad). There are several words connected with Obon. Bon-odori is the name of the dances held in many localities throughout Japan around the time of the Bon festival. The dancers are usually clad in yukata, and the rhythm is slow, fitting to a hot summer evening., "Toro" is the name for the lanterns used to light the way back for the spirits. Some temples or shrines, such as the Kasuga Taisha in Nara, lit up thousands of lanterns at Obon (called manto-e, a "Ten-thousand Lantern Festival"). Another custom is to set lanterns on graves, as is done in the huge Otani cemeteries of Jodo Shin Buddhism in the Eastern hills of Kyoto. At other locations, lanterns are put afloat on rivers, as happens in Arishiyama.

On August 24, Jizo Bon is held, a Bon festival for children where the Bodhisattva Jizo is worshiped as their guardian. This has the character of a quiet neighborhood festival.

August is also the period that many hanabi, fireworks are held all over Japan. They used to be for the repose of the dead and were therefore linked with Obon, but nowadays they have become purely amusement for summer evenings. The Sumida River fireworks in Tokyo are the most famous.

And, last but not least, August is also the month that the big summer festivals of Northern Japan take place, such as the Nebuta Matsuri of Aomori, as well as the dance festivals of Shikoku such as the Awa Odori in Tokushima.

A good old custom to get artificial shivers is to watch plays or films with ghosts in August - or play the parlor game of telling each other yokai stories. On this blog I have posted a list of the ten best Japanese horror movies to help you shiver!

The main flower for August is still the lotus, which I already discussed in my post for July. Another beautiful August flower is the fuyo (cotton rosemallow or hibiscus mutabilis) with its soft petals, in color white to deep pink.

There is a lot of delicious food in August. Hiyayakko, cold tofu eaten in square blocks with some soy sauce, bonito flakes and chopped spring onions, is so easily digestible that also those suffering from natsubate (summer fatigue - see my post) are fond of it. The same goes for the various cold noodles, not only the somen mentioned in my post for July, but also reimen, hiyashi udon and hiyashi champon. Also good against natsubate and an important source of vitamin C is the bitter goya, a vegetable looking like a cucumber but in fact a gourd, that is used for example in stir-fried dishes.

The prime summer fruit - and even a symbol of summer - is the suika, watermelon, said to be good against summer fatigue and full of refreshing juices. Suika are part of the Japanese summer scene since 1640, when they arrived via China. Edamame, boiled soy beans in the pod, lightly dusted with salt, are a healthy appetizer with your sake in summer. They are not only delicious, but also help break down alcohol. August is a good time for very cold sake - for example a sake sherbet!

Also see the Event Calendar for August.