Japan travelblogue 09
Saturday, October 6th, 2007 at 8:20 pmKamakura
About an hour’s train ride out of Tokyo, for which you really want to bring a book unless you like looking at dormitory suburbs filled with Brutalist housing blocks, Kamakura was the 4th largest city in the world in 1250 AD, when it was the seat of the Shogunate. Today it is a pleasant town with many, many temples. Knowing that we would probably be satisfied with seeing three or four, Stu and I made no particular effort to get there early - which meant that I, at least, left with the feeling that I could have fitted in a little more, which was apparently how my great-great-grandmother always said one ought to leave a meal. I don’t know if that opinion extended to all enjoyments, though, and I rather think she would have chided us for being lazy sods. Anyway, we managed to miss the famous large Buddha, but we did see four temples, of which my favourite was the Tokei-ji, founded in 1285, formerly a refuge for women who wanted to divorce their husbands (they were only able to do so after staying at the Tokei-ji for three years). Unlike the other important temples we saw, it didn’t have particularly grand buildings. Instead, it had lovely overgrown grounds and a large, terraced, mossy cemetery with winding paths among trees; it certainly possessed a haunted feeling, and still enveloped one with the sense that here was a refuge, even though it hasn’t functioned in that capacity since 1873, when Japanese women won the right to sue for divorce in the law courts. At Tokei-ji I had the feeling, very sentimental I suppose, of meeting the Old Japan that I had badly wanted to meet. I don’t think I could have met her at a busy tourist attraction; I seem to need weeds and solitudes and spaces to find these spirits - spaces, I suppose, for my book-and-film-fed imagination to go time-travelling in.
Tokei-ji:
Kyudo practitioner at Engakuji, one of the five great Zen temples in Kamakura:
More Engakuji:
A wall of…beer? … at the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine, a Shinto temple, and drummers near one of the gates:
And Kencho-ji, another of the five large Zen temples:
At Kencho-ji there was a meditation hall that was open to the public. Some people were meditating, others were sitting cross-legged and upright reading the temple’s info brochure. I guess there are many ways to the Way (and this Monkey is still no nearer to being any less of a fool…)
October 6th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Tokei-ji is beautiful. The plants creeping over it look like something taking possession of it, that though it’s been forgotten by many people since its purpose was no longer needed, something still wants it. And I can imagine a woman still there, still wondering if she made the right decision.
October 6th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Also, there’s something almost surreal about those beer kegs lined up by the roadside. They look, in the photo, like there’s nothing there but the road and a forest.
A god’s stash, perhaps? Hidden away from a meddlesome husband or wife…
October 10th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Yes - Tokeiji is still in use as a temple, but it still had that sense of desuetude. I think you must be right that the beer was a god’s stash! At first I thought they were drums for the temple, then I looked more closely at the designs…
October 11th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I thought I had already commented on this post. I must be losing my mind. I love things like old shrines and churches and whatnot so much. I want to go see them myself! Envy!
The wall of beer is intensely mysterious. I think I’ll have to agree with the random kami-stash theory.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I’m probably going to have to write a story in which a god has a stash of beer.
Also, Kirsten, you might be interested in this:
http://baronvonfogel.blogspot.com/2007/10/fetus-for-sale.html
October 12th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Oh. My. God.
That is so awesome.
October 12th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Laurie - I admit I can get tired of temples and so forth, but not, somehow, when they’re all mossy and set in greenery. I do have an endless appetite for gardens, though oddly I always found them boring as a child.
Alankria - The Beer God’s Stash sounds better than The Kitchen God’s Wife. Those fetuses are very realistic - though I think I’d want a real one. Which is disgusting of me, I know. And now I’m having thoughts that I’d better not even write down…