Fushimi

I may be back in the States, but I still have Japan travels to talk about, so without further ado, here’s one of them.  In May of 2008, I made a day trip to Fushimi.

Fushimi is now the southernmost ward in Kyoto city, but it used to be an entirely separate city and it has its own castle.

As seen from a train station.  This is as close as I got.

Fushimi is the home of Gekkeikan, the world’s largest producer of sake.  Gekkeikan makes a lot of cheap sake – a lot of cheap sake – but it has some higher quality products, too.  It was the first brewery to sell sake in bottles instead of kegs and is still an innovator.

Gekkeikan was founded in 1637 and remains family owned.  The old brewery is now a museum.

The buildings, which I believe date from around 1900, are so much more attractive than the concrete box warehouses that prevail today, don’t you think?

Of course, wooden buildings do make fires more of a danger.  The adjacent canal may have helped mitigate that.

More importantly for daily business (a hundred or more years ago, that is), the canal provides access to a major river that was used to ferry sake and all manner of other goods to and from Kyoto and Osaka.

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After seeing the museum, I had yakitori for lunch, at a restaurant run by another sake brewery, and then I took a short train ride to Fushimi’s most famous feature, Fushimi Inari Grand Shrine.

Established in the year 711, Fushimi Inari Grand Shrine is the main shrine of Inari, the kami of agriculture and industry.  There are tens of thousands of minor shrines to Inari across Japan, often attached to temples or other shrines.  Inari is said to use foxes as messengers, and you can always identify an Inari shrine by its fox statues.

At Fushimi Inari, businesses and individuals donate (ie, buy) torii gates to wish for success, and these torii make a loop up the mountain behind the main shrine that takes several hours traverse.

At the beginning of the path are two rows of small torii.

They practically form tunnels.

After a relatively short while, the small torii give way to large ones with more space between them.

Each torii has the name and address of its donor written on its uphill side.  It was interesting to read them (those that I could read, anyway), and occasionally I saw some well known companies, such as Sapporo Beer.

It’s the one with the big writing.

I also saw new torii being erected.

The number of gates is just crazy, and the path takes hours to walk, as I said, but it’s not monotonous.  At points, the torii stop for a while and there are other things along the trail.

I’m not entirely sure what these piles are, but my best guess is that they’re private offerings like the gates, but in the form of small shrines.  In Japanese, they’re called tsuka (塚), which just means “mound.” The word tsuka also refers to burial mounds, but I don’t think these are graves.

Here’s a closer look at a mound.

Each torii along the path has 奉納, “dedication” or “offering,” written at the joins on its front side. These torii have that, too, but they also have a bunch of other writing.  On the torii in front, there is the name of a kami on the cross piece – not Inari, but “Tamamitsu-ōkami,” who I don’t know anything about.  The left post says “Erected on New Year’s Day, 2008” and the right post has an address and some names.  “Jewel” (玉) is inscribed in the stone.  Hmm . . . I wish I had a picture of a different mound to compare with this one.  Oh well.  In any case, as far as I know, these mounds are peculiar to Inari shrines.

Along the path, there is also a large pond and the occasional building.

And this cool dragon fountain.

And to abandon narrative entirely, in favor of the “Here’s a ___” blogging style, here’s a stage for ceremonial music and dance, back at the main shrine at the bottom of the trail.

That’s all for now.

Ise Shrine

Bah. I was on a roll for awhile, but this post took forever. I’ve just had too many things going on. For one, I’m in charge of the three days of orientation for the incoming JETs, who will arrive in the beginning of August, and preparing for that has kept me occupied. I’ve also been busy planning a summer trip. The spring term ended on the 20th, and I’m spending the following week and a half traveling around Japan. Of course, while school doesn’t resume until September, Japanese teachers don’t get any time off in the summer. But fortunately, I have a lot of yearly vacation days to use, and so use them I shall. I’ll be going to Tokyo and up into the mountains. I imagine I’ll come back with a lot less money, but with all sorts of experiences and pictures to share. But before that, I still have at least one old excursion that I’ve wanted to talk about.

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A few months back, I made a day trip to the town of Ise, east and a little south of Osaka, on the opposite coast. My reason for traveling to Ise – like everyone’s reason for traveling to Ise – was to visit Ise Shrine, whose official name is simply, The Shrine (“Jingū”).

Ise Shrine is dedicated to the kami Amaterasu, the sun goddess and ancestor of the imperial family, according to Shinto belief. Or more precisely, Jingū’s Inner Shrine is dedicated to Amaterasu, while the Outer Shrine is for the goddess of food, shelter, and clothing, who is also charged with caring for Amaterasu. The “inner” and “outer” labels are misleading though, because the two shrines are in entirely separate locations, some four miles away from each other.

Before heading to the shrines, I had lunch at Daiki, which is famous for being frequented by the Emperor when he is in town.

The restaurant is very relaxed and unpretentious, and serves excellent sashimi and other Japanese food. With my belly filled, I headed to the Outer Shrine. This bridge is the passage between the shrine and the outside world.

And this is as close as most people are allowed to get to the shrine itself.

Generally, only priests and members of the imperial family get to see the central shrine. But from the right spot, you can see its roof.

The architecture predates Chinese influence, and is thus very different from Buddhists temples or even most other Shinto shrines.

And while I’m talking about age and architecture…

This empty square is right next to the central shrine. All the shrine buildings and even the bridges are completely rebuilt every twenty years, only using traditional methods, and the new buildings – exact replicas – go in the adjacent site (the bridges don’t move). When construction is complete, the kami are ceremonially transfered to the fresh shrines and the old ones are taken down. The white post on the left states that the 62nd reconstruction will take place in 2013. With a few missed cycles, Ise Shrine has been reborn in this fashion for 1,300 years. The shrine was founded earlier than that, though. The official history says 4BC, but most scholars think it’s probably a couple centuries younger.

Moving on, this is the bridge to the Inner Shrine.

As you can see, it’s much larger and busier than the Outer Shrine.

A little past the bridge, there was a stage where ceremonial dances and music were being performed.

Unlike the shrines, the performances and even the stage itself showed definite continental influences.

Past the stage, a path leads to the river, where pilgrims make ablutions to purify themselves before heading deeper into the grounds.

In the forests around the shrines, woodcutting has been forbidden since the shrines’ foundation. The trees are mostly hinoki and sugi.

The large quantity of timber needed for the reconstruction comes from an expanse of forest beyond the untouched center.

And this is the center of the center.

One more picture from the Inner Shrine’s grounds:

This bridge leads to a quiet sub-shrine.

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After visiting the Inner Shrine, I headed to a nearby shopping street, where the buildings are in Edo period style (1600-1868). It’s terribly touristy, but many of the shops do actually date from that time.

This is a standing bar (is that the name?), run by a sake brewery called Hakutaka, “White Falcon,” founded in 1862.

In addition to their ordinary business, Hakutaka also makes ceremonial sake for Ise Shrine. If you look at the picture of the Outer Shrine’s bridge, to the right are barrels with their name (白鷹). I had a cup of one of their expensive brews and it was quite good.

The other highlight of the shopping street was the head shop of Akafuku (赤福), a confectionary founded in 1707.

They are famous for Akafuku mochi, which has sweet red bean paste on top, instead of inside. I stopped to have Akafuku mochi and green tea inside the shop. So now I’ve eaten at a 300-year-old restaurant (Imobō, in Kyoto) and a 300-year-old cafe.

This picture from their website shows the shop minus the crowds.

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My final stop around Ise was to see the famous Wedded Rocks.

Trivia: The rice-straw rope weighs over a ton.

On a clear summer morning, the sun rises between the rocks and Mt. Fuji is just visible on the horizon. Alas, it was cloudy, spring, and late in the day when I visited, but at least the tide was in. Apparently it’s much less picturesque when the tide is out.

After visiting the rocks I headed home, but I had a shock on my return trip. The train station near the rocks is just a few stops east of Ise, but it’s very rural. It doesn’t even have ticket machines or proper gates, just a drop-box. If you depart from there, you have to pay at your destination. Anyway, I returned to the station at about 6 o’clock to discover that trains only come once an hour after 5:30, and the station was even unattended. There was a taxi stand outside, but it listed the price for going to Ise station as ¥2,640, versus ¥200 for the train. Obscene. I resigned myself to the 40-minute wait for the train and had a further shock in that when it arrived, it was just one car. The train was on time, but other than that, the whole experience was nothing like what I’ve come to expect from the Japanese train system. I guess that’s when you know you’re really in the sticks.

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Alright, that’s it for now. Tomorrow morning I’m getting up at or before 5 to catch a flight to Tokyo. I’ll be back late on the 31st. Until then.