I'd like to continue the topic of "Fuji-Monuments (Fuji-Zuka)" which I introduced yesterday, on November 26th.
Tokyo is not very far from Mt.Fuji and Mt.Fuji view is visible from many locations in Tokyo when the weather is decent and the air is clear. However, still many of "Fuji-Monuments (Fuji-Zuka)" had been established in Tokyo.
For example in Hachioji-City, as in the photo above and also in the right hand side photo which I showed yesterday, one big rock having a natural Mt.Fuji-like shape is one of the "Fuji-Monuments (Fuji-Duka)", and it is named Hachioji-Fuji. It is located in a local park,
Fuji-no-mori Park. Inside of the park there is a small Sengen Shrine which is one type of Japanese Shinto shrines worshiping Mt. Fuji as the main goddess, and you can see a Fuji-shape carving on the wooden offertory box in the photo above. Hachioji-Fuji is located backside of the shrine building.
The
history of this "Hachioji-Fuj"is not clear because no priest is
stationing in the shrine building. Probably not many local people
would visit here nowadays and Hachioji-Fuji is just standing there quietly.
Since the transportation system has been developed a lot in Japan, today there is no difficulty visiting the original Mt.Fuji. People can enjoy climbing the real Mt.Fuji. However, wouldn't it be another fun to find this kind of hidden local Fuji when you explore local towns?
It may sound like a silly question. Of course, Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan is only one. However, actually there are many mountains having the word "Fuji" in their names all over Japan. Those are called "Local Fuji Mountains (Kyoudo-Fuji)" and usually people call them with the place name as in "Ezo-Fuji(in Hokkaido)", or "Sanuki-Fuji(in Shikoku)", although it is not the official names of the mountain.
Since Mt. Fuji has been a special sacred mountain for Japanese people since ancient times, people are always eager to see Mt.Fuji even though they are not living close enough to see actual Mt.Fuji. Therefore they started to call a local mountain "Local-Fuji" because either it looks similar to Mt.Fuji or it has some connections to Mt.Fuji.
Even outside of Japan, there is a "Local-Fuji" in the U.S. as well. Apparently those who emigrated from Japan to Washington state in U.S.A. named Mt. Rainier as "Tacoma-Fuji" because they missed Mt.Fuji so much.
Even when there was no big mountains in a local town, people in old days still established some miniature Mt.Fuji, as in the right hand side photo, to compare it to the Mt.Fuji. They are called "Fuji-Monuments (Fuji-Zuka)". With the "Fuji-Monuments", usually a Sengen Shrine was built together. Sengen Shrine is one type of Japanese Shinto Shrines to worship Mt.Fuji and the headquarter of Sengen Shrine is at the foot of Mt.Fuji.
At Some of the "Fuji-Monuments", visitors could climb up the miniature Fuji to get a blessing of Mt.Fuji. It is a tradition to receive a Mt.Fuji-blessing easily, especially in old times, since there were no way for most people to climb up the real Fuji.
The photos of real Mt.Fuji and "Fuji-Monuments" on this blog were taken at Hachioji City in the west side of Tokyo. The shape of the "Fuji-Monuments" looks like a mirror image of the real Fuji-view from the area.
In addtion there are more photos of Mt.Fuji taken from West Tokyo area on my "Today's Mt.Fuji from West Tokyo" page! Please click here to see the page!
These photos are showing a traditional lucky charm market called "Trinoichi (Market of Bird-Days)". This Market is a traditional seasonal event held a couple of times in November every year. The reason it is called "Trinoichi Market" is the fact the Market is actually held on a "Day of Bird". In old times, people used twelve animal symbols of the Chinese zodiac to count time such as year, month, day and hour.
With such system, a month can have the same animal days twice or three times, so that "Trinoichi Market" can also be twice or three times depending on the year. In such cases, each market is called separately, such as "Ichi-no-Tori (The First Bird)", "Ni-no-Tori (The Second Bird)", and "San-no-Tori (The Third Bird)". This year in 2015, we have "Trinoichi Market" three times and the second market "Ni-no-Tori (The Second Bird)" was just finished on the 17th and the photos were taken on that day.
What kind of lucky charms are sold at a "Trinoichi Market"? On the market days, many of stalls are set up on the grounds of some shrines and sell traditional "lucky rakes" as in the two upper photos. The meaning of this lucky charm is "Collecting Luck for The Next Year", and usually the rakes are made of bamboo and heavily decorated as in the lower left photos. There is a variety of sizes for "lucky rakes" and the price depends on the size. A big one can be about 5-6 feet (150-160cm) and the smallest size can be about 5 inches (10-15cm). The bigger rakes seem to have too much decoration and don't look like rakes anymore, but when you see the small one shown on the photos on the lower right hand side, you can see it is a really rake.
This year, there's going to be the "San-no-Tori (The Third Bird)" market on the 29th of November which is Sunday. If you'd like to collect luck for the next year, you can still have a chance to go to a "Trinoichi Market" and get a "lucky rake"!
The photos are taken at Otori Shrine in Hachioji City, Tokyo.
"Shichi-Go-San (Seven-Five-Three)" is a traditional Japanese custom to celebrate children's growth at age three, five, and seven. That's why this custom is called "Shichi-Go-San (Seven-Five-Three)". Many parents who have children at age three, five, and seven would dress their children in formal Kimonos and take them to a temple or a shrine to pray for the children's healthy growth on the day of "Shichi-Go-San" celebration.
The meaning of the celebration is different at each age. At age three, mainly girls are celebrated because traditionally it was the age to start growing their heir. Since old times long beautiful pitch black hair is a symbol of women's beauty in Japan, it was an important change for girls. On the contrary at age five it is a celebration for boys only because in old days it was the age when boys started to wear formal men's style Kimono trousers called Hakama. At age seven, it is a celebration time for girls only because girls start to wear thick Obi-belt of Kimono same as grownups in old days.
Traditionally the November 15th is the "Shichi-Go-San Day", but since the children wear formal Kimonos for this custom, parents usually choose a good weather weekend to celebrate it. Thus if you visit a shrine or temple on a fine weekend day in this month, you may be able to enjoy watching the gorgeous combination of "Shichi-Go-San" children wearing Kimonos and colorful autumn foliage as shown in this photo!
The combined photos were all taken at Takahata-Fudo Temple in Hino City, Tokyo.
"Aka Fuji (The Red Mt.Fuji)" is a well-known phenomenon in Japan that occurs when Mt.Fuji gets tinted reddish color from reflection of a sunrise. Actually this photo wasn't taken at dawn but at dusk, but the reddish Fuji reminded me of one of the most famous Ukiyoe-Prints, which is called "Aka Fuji" by Hokusai Katsushika.
A simple reproduction is shown below.
"Ukiyoe-Print" is a traditional wood-block print and during the Samurai era it was used as common means to spread visual information to others. It looks like a color-print because it was printed for each color separately, for example this "Red Fuji" Ukiyoe-Print needed 5 repetitions to print the five colors of blue, light blue, red, green and sepia. Since Japan didn't have any printing machines back then, there were many craftsmen working for this Ukiyoe-Print factories and divided their work to produce a lot of prints.
With Ukiyoe-Prints, even common people could enjoy seeing famous places, beautiful sceneries, popular actors and pretty girls. Apparently the price for a print was reasonably low, so it can be said that these were like one-page magazines with photos at that time. Therefore, Ukiyoe-Print were used to protect Japanese porcelains when fragile goods were packaged for exports, the same way we use old magazines or old tabloid papers.
However Europeans who imported porcelains were surprised to find the wrapping papers and loved them as beautiful art from Japan. They started to collect them and the Ukiyoe-Prints influenced many European artists. Europeans' appreciation for the Ukiyoe-Print in turn influenced Japanese appreciation for the prints, and Japanese started to value them as Japanese Art. Not only the prints are now expensive, Ukiyoe-Prints from Samurai era became very highly priced antiques.
However, maybe somewhere in the world there are still abandoned hundreds-year-old porcelains made in Japan. If you lucky enough to come across them, you'd better check the wrapping papers!
"Mt.Takao Momiji Festival" has begun! Every year this seasonal event for colored leaves is held at Mt.Takao in Tokyo in November. However the forecast says after the 15th would be the best timing for viewing the foliage this year. The photos are from last year around the end of November.
"Momiji" means Japanese Maple trees which will turn to beautiful red in fall, but the word also can mean just "Colored Leaves". It is confusing since Chinese characters used for writing, are ideographic where each character can have multiple meanings. The Chinese characters for Momiji, "紅葉", is a combination of Chinese character "Red" and "Leaves" which can be also pronounced as "Kouyou" meaning literally "Colored Leaves (in fall)". In fact Momiji tree is one of the major trees for the "Colored-Leaves Hunting" which I wrote previously a week ago. Thus the word "Momiji" is used for "colored leaves", as well.
You may think that colored leaves are not only in red color. Yes, actually the Japanese word "Kouyou", which I introduced in the previous paragraph, can be written using different Chinese characters "黄葉". This combination characters have the meaning of "Yellow" and "Leaves". In short, Japanese word for colored leaves, "Kouyou" can be written in both Chinese-character combinations of "Red Leaves" and "Yellow Leaves".
It is like playing with words. I think it would be one of the fun aspects of using ideographic characters for writing. However there is no Chinese-character combination for "Orange Colored-Leaves". Perhaps we should create that one, too.
As I introduced a couple of times previously, Hachioji downtown is one of the
rare areas where real Geishas are still working. Geishas are usually labeled with the name of the area where they work since they traditionally work inside of a
limited district. Thus, the Geishas in these photos are called
“Hachioji Geisha”.
Although they are certainly working in
Hachioji-City especially around downtown area, it is still difficult for
people to come across them. There are not many of them. However, several events are held in the city where Hachioji Geishas participate and if you visit Hachioji on
the days of these events, you can definitely see them.
This is an
open-air tea-ceremony event with Hachioji Geishaa held on the Oct. 17th. With
500 Yen everybody can have a set of a traditional sweet and a
traditional tea bowl of Macha-gren-tea (a strong green tea made of green
tea powder) poured by Geishas. Of course a Geisha will serve the
tea set to you.
Apparently the event started only a couple years ago, but it became one of the annual Geisha events in Hachioji.
