NEWS OF TRAVEL JAPAN

Autumn has come to Japan. The blue sky, the light white clouds, the gentle breeze stroking the skin and Japanese silver grass, “susuki” in Japanese, in rural areas invite people to their country-sides. Unlike cherry blossoms which turn people’s bored minds in the deep winter to spring, or the beauty of red maple leaves which is burned into people’s memories before winter, Japanese silver grass never asserts its own self. Japanese silver grass barely shows its beauty in comparison to something else, like the full moon in the night. However Japanese people have loved it since ancient times. Japanese silver grass has a smell of the ground. And it is nostalgic for Japanese people. There is a series of Japanese potteries similar to silver grass, these are the pottery of Japanese bisque. Unlike the Arita pottery which is known to foreign countries, or the Kutani pottery which is mainly used for dishes at high class Japanese restaurants, the pottery of Japanese bisque is used for daily dish...

Osaka is the third biggest city next to Tokyo and Yokohama, and a city of citizens since the Edo period. Osaka has two different faces of citizens’ energy. One is the energetic face. This face has been made by the economic development since the Meiji period. The representation of the energetic face is Doton-bori which is a riverside town with big neon billboards. Almost all foreign travelers in Osaka visit there and take their own photographs in the background of the big neon billboards. This town will excite you, and you will exult at its chaotic energy.   The Osaka Museum of housing and living The other is an emotional (“joucyo-yutakana” in Japanese) face with good relationship with others made by multilayered day-to-day verbal and nonverbal communications between people. It had its peak in the Edo period. Although it shrank by getting pushed by the energetic face after the Meiji period, you can touch the fragments of the emotional face at The Osaka Museum of housing and livi...

Have you ever seen “Noh”? If you are an experienced person, you are deeply familiar with Japan. If you are familiar with Japanese movies even though you haven’t seen Noh, you always know the shadow of Noh without recognition. Akira Kurosawa was a renowned film director, his films are loved by a lot of foreigners and have influenced many other film directors. His films have many breathtaking unstable acting and many beautiful slow scenes. Each of these scenes is able to be independent from the films’ stories. These scenes, especially his latter films, “Kagemusha”, “Ran” and “Dream”, took in methods of Noh. Incidentally, the picture above is one cut of “Ran” of Akira Kurosawa. What is Noh? Noh is traditional theatre in Japan. Noh is musical theatre with dance and music. Noh is moving art. Noh was constructed by Kan-ami and his father Ze-ami approximately 650 years ago. Noh has no director of theatre. And Kabuki theatre stems from Noh. Moreover, it is one of the world’s intangible cul...

Oku-no-in is the most popular place in Koya-san, and the most precious place for all of the priests of Koya-san as well. Oku-no-in is Kukai’s mausoleum, who had entered nirvana (death of a saint) approximately twelve centuries ago, and a big cemetery where multitudinous souls of historically great men who are sleeping. Koya-san is a secret and kind of sexual place Oku-no-in has a lot of stone statues of “Jizo” and “Kannon” and innumerable mossy gravestones along with countless big cedars. In addition the one long lined cobblestone path between the entrance and Kukai’s mausoleum and the surrounding deep silence with the aforementioned things transport you to another world in a good way. A dark cemetery with moss-covered gravestones is weird in general, and a good cemetery with a saintly atmosphere is hard to come by. Besides, walking along the cobblestone path and seeing various statues and gravestones make you have a special mysterious time. Recently the night tour of Oku-no-in is ge...

My wife and I planned overnight stay at a syukubo, a pilgrim’s lodging at a temple, before visiting Koya-San. Our intention was simple, we had a fascination with the activities of recent foreign travelers in deep Japan, some of them have stayed in syukubos. There are more than fifty syukubos in Koya-San. For many current Japanese people, of course for us too, syukubos are far from their useful convenient hotels. If we stay at a syukubo at any rate, an extraordinary essence is desirable for our experience. At last we decided to stay at the syukubo of part of the world heritage site of Koya-San, Kongo Sanmai-in. Koya-san( 1 ) At the syukubo Kongo Sanmai-in is on the outskirt of the town. Once we arrived at the gate of Kongo Sanmai-in at 4 o’clock, many worshipers who didn’t seem to be guests had been taking photos there. We didn’t know the place to stay and we were afraid of making a mistake of the place, then we asked a guide man in the small reception room where we should go. He ...

From now I want to write about Koya-san. Here is the north-west place of Koya-san, the entrance gate of Koya-san, and on a gentle hill with many trees. The gate made by two tall stones separates the land into two worlds. One is this world and the other is the sacred world, Koya-san. On outside nearby the gate, The Nyonin-do, the praying house for women, stands quietly, because the house hasn’t been used since the Meiji period. On the contrary till the Edo period the house had been full of many women who had come to pray or had come with worries whether their sons devoting themselves to Koya-san had been healthy or not. Because women had been forbidden to enter inside the gate (of course, now there is no such thing as the prohibition of women entering). As in the picture above, a narrow path along a cliff from The Nyonin-do made a route semi-circled around Koya-san and the length of the route is approximately five kilo meters, it is The Nyonin-michi, the Women’s Pilgrimage Route. On...

“In things and materials are wishes of the sender and the maker.” By no means a belief, some Japanese people think so even without a word. And this idea manifests the beauty of Japanese cuisine or the beauty of many Japanese crafts. Because the core of this idea corresponds to purity, and the purity must be transformed into the beauty. I will try to depict it comprehensively and visibly so as that you can catch the mood of it during your travels in Japan, so I chose the case of how to wrap a gift. In western society when people give a gift to another person, they wrap it in decorative paper with a ribbon. Of course In Japan people do the same as birthday gifts or X’mas gifts as well. However if a gift is for a significant celebration like a marriage, how to wrap a gift turns to the traditional Japanese method rigidly.   The picture above depicts promising gifts from the parents of a groom to the parents of a bride. It’s difficult for you to see it directly, but you can see a...