LOST IN TRANSLATION - Chapter 1 - KOYASAN

It all started with a heart-beat! Laurent and Jerome had returned from a very exciting trip in Japan and were bubbling over with enthusiasm. I asked them if they had been to Teshima. An island situated in the Seto inland sea with virtually nothing on it - except a heart-beat museum. The French artist, Christian Boltanski has been collecting heartbeats from all over the world and in 2015 had some 35,000. In 2010 I had mine recorded at an exhibition at the Grand Palais. I told the men about it and some years later they suggested that we all made a trip together to visit Japan - and listen to my heart-beat! Not to mention all the other places that we would visit. Many of them, I had never even heard of.

I had not been back to Japan for more than 20 years. Would it be a shock? How much had it changed? Once we arrived in the Osaka airport, it looked like calm seas ahead. The Japanese organisation, punctuality, cleanliness leaves us for cold. We picked up our cases fast and headed for the station. That sounds easy enough but it was then that I understood that I could never have done that trip alone. Not even 20 years ago. Jerome and Laurent's organisation was as perfect as the Japanese could do - but a little less rigid! Even so, we were to see and visit 10 places in 12 days and transport changes were finely cut. There was never a moment of doubt that the train, ferry, Bullet train, plane would leave dead on time. Somewhere along the way the plane was five minutes late and all the staff were apologizing profusely for such a delay. I wonder how the Japanese cope with Europe after living in such an organized country. If you really wanted to, you could probably eat off the floor in the station!

Our first port of call was Koyasan - a monastery high up in the mountains. Two trains and a funicular later we were to arrive and then drive to our monastery.

Koyasan Onsen Fukuchin - Kongobuji Temple

The men had already visited this site; in fact they had seen half the places we were to see. I was hoping that we could see other places of interest so the trip didn’t become repetitious - for them…

I could see in the second train that the Japanese had changed. Certainly those of my age or a little younger. When I had last visited there was not a grey head in sight. How dreadful! For a man senility had set in! However, older men were now letting the grey grow which meant pepper and salt haircuts.



 Along the way, I discovered that this « new man » could be very attractive. 

I was somewhat nervous about the monastery. I had been told that we would be sleeping on a Japanese futon.  That is something I had experienced in one of my early trips to Tokyo. A good mattress to sink into at night is bliss. A futon you hit the floor boards and the pillow is not much better. My room was delightful -

and no sign of a bed.

That would be made up later we were told…the view from my window was divine and the Japanese gardens were to become a highlight of the trip.

Gardens in Kongobuji Temple

A little about Koyasan. It would be foolish of me to write reams of history about each place we were to see. I certainly didn’t remember much after each new site visited. In fact coming back on the plane, I kept on asking Laurent - where was this or that when showing him a photo. Koyasan, as it was the first stop over and its surroundings seems to have marked me.

Koyasan is home to an active monastic center founded twelve centuries ago by the priest Kukai (posthumously known as Kobo Daishi) for the study and practice of Esoteric Buddhism. It is the headquarters of the Koyasan sect of Shingon Buddhism, a faith with a wide following throughout Japan.
Situated on a small plain at the top of Mount Koya is the sacred area known as the Danjo Garan, a complex of temples, halls, pagodas and Buddhist statuary that welcome visitors to this incredibly silent place.
Surrounded by a thick forest of massive cedars, the area known as Okuno-in, or the Inner Sanctuary, is the setting for a vast cemetery that features the mausolea of numerous famous Japanese, including that of the samurai ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi (or Taiko Hideyoshi) as well as memorials to the spirits of soldiers killed in the Pacific War. (Tourism Japan)

Well I did take some of that off Internet. The Buddhist priests were wandering about but there was no rush. The silence struck me at once. In fact it did the whole way throughout Japan. Off the beaten track anyway. Somehow, you could listen to the silence…

In all the trips that I had done to Japan, I only saw one or two temples. The first temple we saw was Konpon Daito. It’s a towering Pagoda and a symbol of Shingon Buddhism. The English translation for this place was
« Great Fundamental Pagoda ». You will see as we go along that the English translations of signs were sometimes impossible to understand or very funny.

Another one not far from this was equally majestic. The wood carving was out of this world. This was Saito. Built by the Bishop Shinzen in 887. The present building was rebuilt in 1834. The 36 pillars and the central one, symbolize the 37 sacred divinities of Vairocana.

Nearly all the temples have either tragic « heads of state » and when they die or are killed they turn into birds or some mystical an animal which invariably haunts the temple where they lived…it doesn’t take much to imagine all the mysteries and superstition which englobes the different temples, monasteries and Pagoda.

There are more than 35 temples which have been made into hostels or hotels for the tourism, yet we were not bothered at all by other people. Wandering around the area as we did, it seemed as if a quietude had settled over us. Even the groups of people wandering around the different places seemed to fit in with the silence.

Inside our monastery

Still inside our monastery

 We would be visiting the Okuno-in cemetery. Inwardly I was very pleased. Early evening. The twilight zone. No stars for the moment, but a black night was descending upon us. 

As is relatively typical of me, I didn’t go searching out the mausoleum, (nor the places we were to see) but rather wandered on and off the cobblestone path, into the forest, among gravestones, around crypts. The cemetery is around 2km long, and housing over 200,000 gravestones and memorial pagodas constructed over centuries.  It is an overwhelming experience.

The sotoba or gorinto is a traditional Shingon grave stone, consisting of five blocks representing the 'elements' of earth, water, fire, air and aether. There are many thousands of these in Okuno-in, ranging in height from a few inches to over ten feet. The grandest ones have their own fenced enclosure with a tori gateway. During my research, I discovered that tori literally means bird abode and is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred. We were to see many of them.

TORI GATEWAY

Now that brings me to the bibs. They seemed to be everywhere and I wanted to know why!

BIBS !

Jizo is one of the most popular Buddhist deities in Japan. He is Bodhisattva (a Buddhist saint, who has achieved enlightenment but postponed his own Buddhahood in order to save others), and is depicted as a monk, often carrying a staff. Because of his role as a protector of children, Jizo statues are often dressed in baby clothes, especially hats and bibs. Another point which made me fall for Jizo. He was the protector of women and the weak. I don’t describe myself as weak but it was nice to know that there was someone out there protecting me.

By placing a bib on a statue, you are asking Jizo to watch over the deceased child and act as a surrogate parent, as well as protecting the life of living children. At least that is the original reason – it has become quite a popular gesture, so many other statues apart from children are also now wrapped in bibs.
                

s

JIZO

A lot was clearer now, but leaving money in little bowls in front of a statue stunned me. In France that would be stolen in seconds. I never found a satisfying reply to what these bowls represented but suspect that as a Buddhist never dies - he is just waiting to be woken up at a specific time, that the money just as food is left for the defunct to help him on the road - but to where, I am not sure.

We asked a girl if there was more to be seen at one moment and followed her suggestion to go over the bridge and visit the Hall…

Torodo Hall (Hall of Lamps) is Okuno-in's main hall for worship, built in front of Kobo Daishi's mausoleum. Inside the hall are more than 10,000 lanterns, which were donated by worshipers and are kept eternally lit. In the hall's basement are 50,000 tiny statues that have been donated to Okuno-in on the occasion of the 1150th anniversary of Kobo Daishi's entrance into eternal meditation in 1984. We arrived there at closing time. The Buddhists or men who were there let us visit the main halls. Very moving that was too.

I am so glad we visited the cemetery at night. It had a real mystery about it and frankly there could have been spirits floating around. The Japanese are superstitious people. This cemetery is the oldest and largest in Japan and everyone would like to be buried there…cemeteries have always had an appeal to me. This one even more so. It seemed to be alive in that lamp lit atmosphere.

Dinner was not very successful the first night out. A lesson though as we discovered that restaurants closed early. 9pm. That is early by our standards but this is not so for the Japanese. 

I was glad to find my room. A beautifully comfortable looking mattress awaiting me. I slept like an angle. Jizo was looking after me.

and my bed...

No door is locked. There was a small knock on the screen the following morning. I opened it to see these two very handsome creatures! They were back from the bathing house. I opted for a scrub down in my bathroom basin. Then to breakfast. As we had reserved for 8am, there was a sign like this on a door…

So we went into our specific eating place. Cooked breakfast have never appealed to me. Asiatic breakfast even less so. There was no way out, this was put in front me. I ate or I didn’t. I didn’t.

Down the sinuous road to the funicular and there we were on it again.

This time standing next to the driver. When I took this photograph, I felt certain he was asleep…what a thought on that very steep trip down.



We were off again.

In the train again

A very strange looking person

And peeping through...

Join the local "kitsch"

Osaka Station

Osaka Station

Next stop would be Kyoto. A town that my Father had described to me. He was not the only one. Everyone who had visited Kyoto was enchanted. I wondered if I would be too.