Japan Navigator

Gangoji is one of the oldest temples of Japan. Founded by Soga no Umako in 593 in the Asuka area, it played an important role in spreading Buddhism which initially was seen as a form of foreign magic to protect the state. In 718 the capital was transferred to Nara (Heijokyo) and Gangoji followed – although it left a small temple with a battered statue behind in Asuka which still exists today. The new temple stood just south of Kofukuji and was counted among the Seven Great Temples of age.

[Main Hall of Gokurakubo, Gangoji, Nara]

It must have been a splendid temple, but all that remains of it today are the foundation stones of a pagoda, standing forlorn in a quiet garden somewhere in the middle of the old town of Nara (a small model of that pagoda can be seen in the Gangoji Museum). And there is a famous statue of a stern Yakushi Nyorai, now housed in the Nara National Museum.

[Zenshitsu of Gokurakubo, Gangoji, Nara]

And part of the elongated hall for the monks has been preserved. You can see such halls where the monks lived also in Horyuji. In the case of Gangoji, it long ago lost its function and was incorporated into a sub-temple, Gokurakubo, the “Paradise Quarters.” Gokurakubo today is the only functioning part of Gangoji, so it has taken over the name, but originally it was just an offshoot that became more important than the original temple.

[Stone statues in front of the Zenshitsu, Gangoji, Nara]

Gokurakubo was set up in the 8th c. after the Sanrin priest Chiko in his later years was directed in a dream to rely on faith in Amida alone. It became one of the earliest centers of faith in the Buddha Amida and his Western Paradise in Japan. In the following centuries, Amidism became very popular among the ordinary people, so Gokurakubo grew and survived as a living temple, while the rest of Gangoji fell away in the shadow of the centuries.

[Peeping into the Paradise Quarters, Gangoji, Nara]

But it, too, was rebuilt: the main hall dates from the Kamakura period (1244), but incorporates as its rear part the above mentioned monks’ hall of the original temple. So some elements of the temple from 718 survive here: some pieces of wood, especially part of the roof tiles are thought to be original – you can detect them by looking at the color, they are a bit brownish. This part of the hall is called Zenshitsu, or Meditation Hall. Other treasures in the temple are a serene Amida statue, an Amidist mandala developed by Chiko – this mandala was the main devotional image of Gokurakubo.

[Zenshitsu, Gangoji, Nara - can you spot the older tiles?]

I first came to Gangoji in December 1988, already more than twenty years ago (the photos used here were taken at that time). My wife and I had traveled to Nara from Tokyo that day, put our luggage in the hotel and then came to Gangoji. I just had a busy and rather annoying period in my work in Tokyo behind me. It was a fresh but sunny winter day, and standing there in front of the serene temple with its deep, soothing browns and grays was such an uplifting experience that all shadows in my mind fell away. That is why I love to visit temples in Japan – it is a perfect antidote to the modern world and its anxiety. In the ensuing weeks, my wife and I would visit all famous and many not-so famous temples in Nara, studying the ancient statues, and we saw many more great things, but the feeling on this first, bright day, was the best of them all.

See all my Gangoji photos on Flickr!

Access: 15 min on fot from Nara Kintetsu st., 10 min south of Kofukuji, right in the middle of the old town of Nara
Entry: 400 yen. Hrs. 9:00-17:00 (in winter 16:30), closed 12/28-1/4 and 8/21-8/25.
Tel. 0742-23-1377


P.S. Nowadays there is an excellent shop selling local sakes opposite the gate of Gangoji!

Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking by travel writer and journalist Michael Booth is a funny and easily digestible book. Booth’s interest in Japanese food starts when a Japanese friend after an argument about the quality of Japanese cuisine, hands him the classic Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji. Booth becomes hooked on Japanese food and to take the culinary pulse of the island nation, decides to travel to Japan. Taking his wife and two young sons with him, for several months he eats his way through the length of the country, staying in Tokyo, Sapporo, Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka and Okinawa.

The resulting book is above all funny. Booth writes a racy and humorous style and I was reminded of Dave Barry Does Japan. This also has a negative side for it unfortunately means that the rather hackneyed “Westerner meets exotic Japan” newbie theme gets a lot of space. We have the obligatory sumo stable and chanko nabe, weird crawling things in Tsukiji market, a seafood lunch with female abalone hunters, drinking coffee in a dog cafe, feeding cows beer and of course viewing the giant tapeworm in the Meguro Parasitological Museum. And not only that, we also get treated to Japan as the height of freakishness: eating snake stew in Okinawa, enjoying cod sperm, whale ice cream and other unspeakable things the Japanese ingest almost daily (do they?).

But is it a good book about Japanese cuisine?

I am afraid not. Booth is new to Japan, so he remains stuck in the old exoticism rut. He has prepared himself admirably about Japanese food by reading the above mentioned book by Shizuo Tsuji and a couple of others, but he is no specialist in Japanese culture and makes some major errors there (for example what he says about Shinto). And above all, he does not speak or read Japanese so has to rely on the kindness of others or on the English abilities of his informants, which in this domestic sector are not large.

[Shirako, sperm sacs of the cod fish, photo by puss_in_boots]

This shuts him effectively out – he is treated as an honored guest, and that is what he remains throughout the book, a visitor dipping into chanko-nabe and ramen, tako-yaki and yudofu, and enjoying the heights of kaiseki. There are visits too, to a kelp processing plant, a farm growing wasabi, a cattle farm, a miso factory. There are also a sort of interviews, with such food luminaries as Mr Hattori and Mr Tsuji, heads of the largest competing culinary academies, one in Tokyo, the other in Osaka. That these important persons go out of their way to entertain Booth shows he had some good introductions. He pays them back by writing episodes about them that read like PR brochures. Because he is not able to speak Japanese, he only gets standard answers and the standard polite treatment for foreigners.

I was hoping for some deeper insights into Japanese food, but there are no new ideas here, it is all superficial reportage, a series of humorous accounts of the different meals Booth enjoys.

That I still enjoyed this book has one reason: Booth writes very well and is funny and sympathetic. But don’t expect anything new or insightful when you are past the newbie stage yourself. And for food, first read Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art or that other good introduction, Lonely Planet World Food: Japan (Lonely Planet World Food Guides).

For some mysterious reason, both the links (blogroll) widget and the categories widget on my site stopped working. I upgraded to WordPress 2.8 last week, but at first things were working fine. Sorry for the inconvenience! Anybody had the same problems?
P.S. I de-installed all widgets and then re-installed them, first the links, but that didn’t help…

What are the best kofun in Japan?

Before I answer that question, first some facts.

Kofun are burial mounds dating back to the 3rd-7th centuries. They are also called takatsuka or tsuka. Kofun were covered with a large mound of earth. The burial chamber is either a pit or an artificial cave. There are about 30,000 such kofun in Japan.

[Takamatsu Kofun, Asuka, Nara. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

Kofun were constructed for tribal chieftains. Haniwa, clay images, were placed on the surface of the mounds – perhaps to spiritually guard the site, or to establish its sacred boundaries. Haniwa include houses, boats and humans, but are also often simple cylinders. The large tombs also contain burial goods as bronze mirrors (sign of authority), weapons and jewelry.

Kofun can be round or square, but the most typical form is the so-called keyhole shape (zenpo-koen-fun).

Almost 900 kofun, mostly in the Kansai area, have been designated as in some way associated with the Imperial House – often without solid historical evidence. These mounds are under control of the Imperial Household Agency and are unfortunately not open to archeological research and excavations, thereby obscuring an important window on Japanese history.

[Tumuli in Sakitama Historical Park, Gyoda. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

Interesting are also the 600 “decorated” tombs found mainly in Kyushu, dating from the 5th and 6th centuries.

Now the answer. Here are the five most interesting kofun or kofun clusters (note: I only include places where you can have a good view of the kofun. Very famous tombs as the Daisenryo in Sakai have not been included, as there is nothing to see):

1. *** Kofun in the Asuka area, south of Nara. It is possible to make a walking tour along these mounds from Asuka Station. You can also rent a bicycle.
Most important are the Takamatsuzuka Kofun (includes a small museum where replica of the wallpaintings are shown), the tombs of Emperor Temmu and Empress Jito, and the Ishibutai, an exposed stone kofun chamber. There is much more to see in Asuka, such as Asukadera, so you can easily spend a full day here.

[Ishibutai in Asuka. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

2. *** Saitobaru Kofun cluster in Miyazaki Pref. (1 hour by bus from Miyazaki City). In a beautiful park with a mysterious atmosphere, at the foot of the Kirishima volcanic plateau. 300 mounds of various shapes and sizes. There is a small museum as well. The unusual haniwa found here, as a house and boat, are housed in the Tokyo National Museum.

3. ** The Sakitama Historical Park in Gyoda (Saitama) consists of nine large-scale tumuli graves (kofun) built between the end of the fifth and beginning of the seventh century. Again in a beautiful park. There is a large museum and also interesting is that one of the kofun can be entered to see a replica of the burial chamber. See my previous post about the Sakitama Historical Park.

4. ** Boso Fudoki no Oka (Chiba), a scenic, historical park covering 32 hectares, laid out on a hill dotted with about 120 old tumulus graves. There are small grave mounds, not more than tiny knolls, lying in the shade of large trees, but also imposing, grassy mounds.

[Boso Fudoki no Oka, Chiba. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

The park is situated on a low ridge, with the wide Kanto plain at one’s feet, as if the dead have been honored with VIP seats. See my previous posts about Boso Fudoki no Oka and nearby Ryukakuji Temple.

5. ** Chikatsu-Asuka is an area in southern Osaka Prefecture with over 200 tumuli graves (kofun) from the 6th and 7th century, and also the famous Prince Shotoku is said to be buried here at Eifukuji Temple. The kofun are not very special here (difficult to see through the dense vegetation) but there is a huge museum dedicated to tomb culture, designed by none other than Ando Tadao. It features a huge sloping stepped roof and inside, a vaulted space like a blown-up tumulus grave. The museum displays both models and archeological items from the Kofun- and Asuka-periods. see my previous post about the Chikatsu-Asuka Museum.

[Saitobaru, Miyazaki. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

As a bonus, I mention the Hashizuka in southern Nara, which you can see when you walk the famous old route of the Yamanobe Road (a hike which gets *** stars).

For the Daisenryo, visit the Sakai City Museum instead. Full scale models of decorated tombs of northern Kyushu can be found in the Kumamoto Prefectural Art Museum.

Do you have any other suggestions for kofun?

In the middle of Kobe, almost obscured by flats and residences, lies one of the largest ancient graves (kofun) in Japan, the Goshikizuka Tumulus.

[Goshikizuka Kofun]

It sits in Tarumi on a hill overlooking Awaji island across the channel – affording a good view of the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge. The tumulus dates from the late 4th or early 5th century and is a 194-meter long keyhole-shaped tomb (an elongated square topped by a circle). It probably belongs to a local chieftain who dominated traffic through the sea channel. At the side is a smaller, circular tomb (called kotsubo, “small vase”) and the whole used to be surrounded by a deep moat that was 10 meters wide.

[Goshikizuka Kofun]

The 18 meter high tumulus had three tiers and the slopes were covered with packed cobble stones. On the top of the mound and the flat planes at the bottom, upright finned cylindrical haniwas were lined up. In the moat, three island-like platforms were built, probably to allow bridges to connect with the mound proper.

[Goshikizuka Kofun]

The tumulus used to be much larger in the past – of the elongated square front part only one third is left, the rest was flattened when the Sanyo and JR lines were built.

The name Goshiki “Five colors” (in the sense of “many colors”) was suggested by the small stones with which the upper part of the tumulus was covered. They are from Awaji island and have glittering parts that reflect the sunlight in many colors.

[Goshikizuka Kofun - haniwa and Akashi Kaikyo Bridge]

In all 2,200 haniwa were found during the excavation. Although they included a few figures, most were simple cylinders about 50 cm high.

The tumulus is already mentioned in the Nihon Shoki. In Edo times it had famous visitors as etcher Shiba Kokan. Unfortunately, it suffered during and after WWII, but after extensive excavations starting in 1965, it was as much as possible restored to former splendor, even including some copies of the haniwa.

[Goshikizuka Kofun - top of the mound with haniwa]

Do you like visiting kofun and other archeological sites in Japan?

5 min walk east from Sanyo-Tarumi Station on the Sanyo Line. Entry is free. Upon registering at the small office next to the entrance, you will receive an English pamphlet. Opening times: 9:00-16:30. Closed on Monday.

Travel Ranking

Stars: * (out of four)

In the first place for those interested in archeology or history. Secondly, also a nice destination when you live in Kobe, to get to know your own city. Not recommended to tourists and first-time visitors.

What are the best kofun in Japan? Where can I see the best haniwa?

As the Japan Times informs us, three female “ambassadors of cute” appointed by the Foreign Ministry have started traveling abroad to introduce Japanese pop culture to young people overseas.

Is this a good thing? Will people still take Japan serious when they are flooded with manga, cosplay and “kawaii” characters? Isn’t this degrading the whole of Japanese culture?

[Photo from Flickr Photostream of chanchan222]

No, I don’t think so. In the first place, there is not one monolithic thing called “Japanese culture,” but rather nowadays there are various cultures in diversifying Japan. Anime, manga and cosplay are part of “Japanese youth culture” and have proven surprisingly popular with young people around the world. In the 1960s youth culture came from the U.K. (Beatles etc), now it comes for a large part from Japan.

Different from whether we like the contents of that culture, I think in itself that is good: economically (Japan needs to shift more to exporting services and “soft” products rather than only “hard” industrial products), but also for Japan’s image. It is better to have an “anime” or even “kawaii” image than no image at all. So it is a good idea of the Japanese government to sponsor this.

Moreover, the young persons who now enjoy manga, will often continue later as serious students of other “Japanese cultures” – I know someone from The Netherlands who studied Japanese because of an initial interest in manga and now is at a Japanese university doing research in serious modern literature… In other words, thanks to the manga/anime boom there is more favorable interest in Japan, which is “capital” for the future and does not hurt Japanese credibility.

[Photo from Flickr Photostream of marimoon]

A final point: also with my work of exporting sake, I notice that the “cool” image that anime etc are giving to Japan helps “sell” other Japanese cultures, such as Japanese food culture / haute cuisine. Or in other words, thanks to manga etc. sake in the U.S. and Europe has a “cool” image (the manga image transferred to other Japanese cultures), very different from in Japan itself where due to the flooding of the market with cheap stuff to which alcohol has been added by the big breweries, sake is often (wrongly!) seen as “non-cool” and something only for older men.

P.S. The easy acceptance abroad of anime and manga with their different characters and story lines is by the way an interesting intercultural phenomenon…

Ionushi aka Aurelio Asiain was already known to me because of his interesting blog (in Spanish) in which he mainly writes on Japanese literature. He often illustrates his posts with beautiful photo’s but until today I did not realize he is also a great photographer with a huge amount of must-see pictures on Flickr. Most of them were taken in Japan.

I can do no better than show you, so here are five of my favorites:

Our memory is longer than mine
(Mysterious… like Heian time travel)

Come again under the red umbrella
(Mesmerizing colors)

This is a state of mind
(A wonderful mood, the empty boats are like thoughts going around)

There is poetry in some poets
(Outstanding portrait)

Those footsteps, deep into the silence
(Slowly echoing footsteps on wintry Mt Koya)

By all means, visit Ionushi’s original Photostream at Flickr to enjoy more of these intelligent and subtle pictures – there are 2,245 of them!

As an experiment I have started two new blogs on Blogger/Blogspot:

Japanese Food Dictionary – short posts about Japanese food ingredients, dishes, various types of cuisine etc. I have been writing about Japanese food in Japan Navigator, too, but wanted to make short posts like dictionary entries and thought that had better be separate, at least for the time being.

What Basho never talked about – posts that do not fit on Japan Navigator, for example because they are not about Japan, or are not “serious” enough. The title is a variation on the title of a Chinese collection of ghost stories “What the Master (=Confucius) never talked about” or Zipuyu – subjects not addressed by the Great Sage were of course supernatural things and other sensational or simply not-so-serious items.

In April 1988 my wife and I for the first time attended the Miyako Odori performance in Gion. At that time it was much less commercialized (or should I say “less vulgarized”?) than it is now. We also did not have to face the immense throngs of people that are herded through the performance today.

We had tickets for the tea ceremony that is performed as an extra by a geiko before the start of the actual theater program. Twenty years ago it was still possible to observe this at ease in quiet surroundings (we were there last year when it was not even possible to drink the tea before being chased out again…).

[Tea ceremony by Toyochiyo during the 1988 Miyako Odori, Kyoto. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

During that long-ago visit we were lucky, because the geiko performing the tea ceremony was non other than Toyochiyo, at that time the top geiko of Gion Kobu (and therefore the top geiko of Japan!). I was able to take some good pictures of her. Assisting in the ceremony was the maiko Kotsuru. The dance performance that followed was also memorable.

A few days ago I put some of the scans of the slides I took in 1988 on Flickr and the feedback I got motivated me to do some research: where was Toyochiyo now?

Well, as I could read on her own website (only in Japanese), she is doing fine! In her profile on the site I read that in all she worked as a geiko in Gion from 1968 to 1989. She retired one year after we saw her, at the still young age of 36.

When still a geiko, she had obtained a license as Ikebana teacher, and she now was invited to join a group that toured the world to spread Japanese culture via ikebana demonstrations. In all, Toyochiyo visited more than 78 countries.

[Tea ceremony by Toyochiyo during the 1988 Miyako Odori, Kyoto. The maiko is Kotsuru. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

In 1999 she returned to Gion and opened a traditional Japanese tea and dessert shop “Kasai” in a 100-year old chaya (the place where geisha entertain their customers) in Hanami-koji. Visiting the restaurant is a golden chance to see a chaya from the inside. The menu features matcha, zenzai, warabi-mochi, etc.

Toyochiyo is very active promoting the culture of Gion by lecturing, both in Japan and abroad. In 2008 she lectured at Kyushu University about her research on the comparative cultures of geisha in Japan and Korea. Among her many accomplishments are the tea ceremony, calligraphy, song and dance, and ikebana. In that last capacity, she now acts as a free ikebana artist and teacher (i.e. not bound to any school) and organizes her own productions and events.

Her present name is Kiriki Chizu.　She also writes a (Japanese) blog on her website called “Gion Saijiki.”

See my Flickr pictures.

All information about Toyochiyo divulged above has been made public on her own website www.c-kiriki.com

“Noryo yuka” are wooden terraces built over a small canal running parallel to the River Kamo in Kyoto. Those structures are set up between May 1 and September 30 at the back of the many restaurants that sit between Nijo and Gojo streets so that patrons can enjoy dinner in the cool evening breeze. There are about 80 such dining platforms. It is an old custom, going back to Edo times.

[LIFE AS IT WAS IN OLD JAPAN -- Four Maiko Dining on "Yuka" Along the Bank of the Kamo River, KYOTO. From the Flickr Photostream uploaded by Okinawa Soba]

The Kamo riverside used to be a sort of no man’s land where entertainers and prostitutes lived and plied their trade already since the 14th century. At those times, benches (called shogi) would be set up by food stalls for their customers and it is thought these developed into wooden terraces connected to restaurants. The terraces became a sort of permanent fixtures, but were pulled down in the rather stiff Meiji-period, to make place for modern developments.

The above picture shows a scene from about 1898 when the terrace was apparently still built in a low position above the Kamo River itself rather than on high stilts above the embankment. The picture was taken by famous photographer T. Enami.

[Noryo Yuka of Starbucks, Sanjo Ohashi, Kyoto. Photo Ad Blankestijn]

And the wheel of time keeps turning. Besides Japanese food in all price-classes, you can today also have Thai, Korean, Chinese, and even Starbucks coffee on a “noryo yuka!” Kyoto is hot and humid in summer, but the sight alone of the river makes you feel cooler, not to speak of the many lanterns adding charm to the evening scene.

Enter via the streetside of the restaurant, so from Pontocho etc. Except May and September, the noryu yuka are not open in the daytime. Kyoto Visitors Guide has some suggestions for restaurants.