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So K and I went on a tour earlier today to two places in Iwate Prefecture, the first was Hiraizumi and the second was Geibi gorge. They are both very picturesque places and even though it was raining K and I had a pretty good time. We do both hope to get back down there again maybe during the summer or fall though when it hopefully isn’t raining. ^^
In Hiraizumi town is a tall hill, and on that hill are many temples and shrines. Here’s a link to the official Hiraizumi town site: http://www.chusonji.or.jp/index.html The majority are Buddhist temples, the most famous being the Konjiki-do (Golden Hall) temple and is made of wood from Southeast African rosewood, African Ivory iridescent shells and covered in gold leaf. It’s quite a site to see, such detail is amazing. Here’s a link to a picture from the official site:http://www.chusonji.or.jp/annai/konjikidoh/index.html, you can’t take any pictures of it unfortunately. It was built by this dude Fujiwara Kiyohira for a mausoleum in 1124. The statues are of Amida (the head Buddha) which is the main figure, and of Amida’s attendants. On the sides of each dias are carvings of peacocks gilt covered with gems adorning their tail feathers.
Another temple and the main one for the area is the Chuson-ji (Golden Pavilion) temple, which was built in 1105. The story behind it goes that Fujiwara, the same as above, lost his father, wife and son during battles and realized “that hatred and revenge would not heal the pain in his heart, so he pledged to Buddha to build the temple to help console the spirits of the dead, whether friend or foe, human or animal.” That was from the pamphlet I got from the temple complex.
The Fujiwara family after the temples were built dedicated themselves to transcribing Buddhist sutras (sutra is a word for manual). They had some beautiful ones transcribed onto dark blue scrolls with gold and silver ink. They displayed several in the museum that now surrounds the Golden Hall. They also displayed many other objects, but not anywhere near the 3,000 treasures that they have from Fujiwara’s time.
After that we wandered around the complex area for a couple hours, and thankfully the rain had calmed down for a bit so I could take some decent pictures. We found a Noh theater, which we thought was really cool, cause we had just learned about Noh plays in our Japanese Language and Culture class a couple weeks ago. Noh is a form of play that was created in the 14th century and sponsored by the samurai/nobles class. Noh players wear mask and very bulky kimono’s so that the actor’s personality doesn’t reflect onto the character they are playing. It’s sometimes called “the art of walking” because every movement they perform is slow and calculated to reflect a certain type of persona for each character. Old women move different then young men characters and you can tell from their movements what type they are without having to look at their masks if you’re well versed in Noh (I’m not XD). The stage is in the center of 4 pillars and connected to a door off stage by a narrow walkway called the hashigakan, and painted onto the back of the stage is a pine tree (Cyprus I think) that represents a spiritual area, or an area where spirits have been seen. That type of Cyprus tree is commonly found by temples and shrines as well. The props for the play are very simple, like a plain four walled hut will represent a house, or just an outline to represent what the item is. On the back wall chanters will usually sit and almost all talking not done by the main actors is done by them. There is also a whole art form dedicated to making Noh masks that is handed down generation to generation, as well as the acting itself. Kabuki is like this as well, where it is a family position handed down to the next generation. Here’s the wiki link to Noh if you wanna read up on it more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh
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By the way, they are vegetarian and they cooked up a scrumptious meal without any meat at all! Yum! Our room was ready too, they nicknamed it the honeymooner’s suite complete with amenities! It was the cutest thing that I saw. I loved how they made us feel so welcomed. ^^
