Thursday, October 4, 2001 (click to see all posts from this day)
|
Preliminaries
It rained today. (Understatement.) It never didn't rain today. On previous rainy days, it has rained off and on. Today it rained on and on. It's raining still.
So there won't be many pictures, though there are a few stories.
I went back to the station past the split in the road, where I stopped yesterday. There was a featureless trudge up a fairly gentle slope, then I was in Ishiyakushi.
Ishiyakushi, Station #44 on the Old Tokaido
Ishiyakushi is the birthplace of Sasaki Nobutsuna (1872-1963). There is a hall commemorating him. Sasaki was a poet and critic, as well as the leader of a literary reform movement. One of his specialties was commentary on the Man'yoshu, a collection of around 4,500 poems compiled in the 8th century.
Hiroshige's Tokaido: Ishiyakushi, Station #44 on the Old Tokaido
 In this scene of the village, you can actually make out the roof of the temple's hondo (main hall). It was pointed out to me by the "temple wife" discussed below. It's the highest roof in the cluster of buildings on the left. |
The ema is originally a Shinto artifact, though it's now often seen at temples. The idea is that you buy the plaque, write a prayer on the back, and hang it up as an offering to the gods. In times past, what you bought was an animal to be sacrificed. The word ema has two characters. The first means "picture"; the second, "horse." So this is a substitutionary sacrifice. Instead of a horse, we offer the gods a picture of a horse. In fact, most of the ema I have seen have been pictures of horses or other animals; and the shape of the plaque is usually--like this one--the shape of a small stable.
After a wonderful respite at the temple, I plodded on toward Shono. Just past the ichirizuka outside of Ishiyakushi, I noticed that a woman had pulled her mini-van over to the side of the road. She was standing with her umbrella, rummaging around in the back of the vehicle. When I was about 10 meters away, she turned and walked toward me with a second, closed umbrella in her hand. My second present in under an hour!
I pointed out that I was wearing an umbrella (the words for "umbrella" and my style of hat are the same in Japanese), but she said it wasn't sufficient. All o-settai should be accepted, so I took it. I must have looked like a one-man band, walking down the road with one umbrella on my head, another in my hand, my backpack, my walking stick, and my raincoat!
Shono, Station #45 on the Old Tokaido
At Shono, though, the next station, I was glad to have it.
Not much. But one of the "old houses" is in fact a museum. Out front is a large sign depicting Hiroshige's print for this station. In the print--as in real life--it's raining. So I decided to set up a "funny" picture. But there was no sheltered place to put the camera. Brainstorm! I tied my "new" umbrella to my tripod, et voila! A protected place for my camera.
The woman in the background had been kibitzing through the whole process. Afterward, she invited me in to see the collection. One of the nicest things there--a relief from the usual kago--were 300-year-old signboards that had been posted in the town by the Edo bakufu--the Shogun's government.
Hiroshige's Tokaido: Shono, Station #45 on the Old Tokaido
 As seen in the official shot. |
Leaving Shono, I walked and walked and...you know. A river crossing here, a tree there. On the outskirts of Kameyama, the next station, I hopped a bus in to the JR station and took a train for "home."
In the rain.
| ← Previous Day | Back to Old Tokaido Guide | Next Day → |
Posted October 5, 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment