Otaku - The Asakusa Kannon Story
Part of my love for Japan comes from my geeky side. *ahem* When I say geeky, I didn’t mean just going all apeshit over games or anime, there were many other things I truly enjoyed that’s a genuine carried over from a childhood filled with all kinds of chinese fairytales, lores and legends.
BTW, Kyubey is awesome.
According to legend, 2 fishermen found the statue of Kannon in the nearby Sumida river. The chief of the village then recognised the importance of the statue and turned his home into a temple for the Kannon so others could come worship it.
The first temple was, supposedly, built around AD645, making it the oldest temple in Japan. As with any building in Japan though, it had to survive warfare, earthquakes, fires and tsunami - and this temple was no different.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunnate, also designated the temple as the patron temple of the clan
In front of Japanese temples (temples are for the Buddhist gods, Shinto buildings are called shrines!), there are often guardian statues. Senso-ji’s guardians are particularly famous because they have the fearsome Lightning and Wind gods, Rai-jin and Fu-jin.
Firstly, guardian statues always comes in twos. On one side, the statue would have an open mouth, while the other would have closed mouth. This is to represent A and M, or, like the greeks, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the sanskrit symbolisation, these A and M also represents the beginning and end of all things.
While not all the statues we eventually saw were similar (these are pretty much the only 2 we saw that looks like Oni), they are representatives of the idea of Kongorikishi, also known as the bodyguards of Buddha.
In Japan, Fujin and Raijin are always depicted together in such a protective position. They were seen again in Sanjusangen-do in Kyoto, as part of Buddha and Kannon’s bodyguards.
Some of the details in the temples are pretty amazing. No matter how many years old it is, you have to think that at some point, the paint jobs, the wood - SOMETHING would eventually wear out, fadeaway, grow ugly.
The art work here seems to defy that. It still looks vivid, reaching out to you, gorgeous.
Also, this is the year of the dragon - SO HERE’S SOME LUCK FOR YOU! YOU’RE ALL WELCOME!
Asakusa is also famous for their Matsuri festivals. Therefore, there were shops around with relevance to the matsuri - from Taiko drum sticks, to the mikoshi (Divine Palanquin, like a caravan for deities, but instead of wheels, they have thousands of human beings) makers.
Just on the intersection between Ueno and Asakusa is a supposedly Taiko Museum. They also make and sell these Mikoshi, some of them real awesome looking, and fiercely detailed. Expensive too.
no detail was too small to be left out. One look at it, and I wondered, geez, that took a lot of time and determination. How easy would it be to go, well, no one would look at it? But they cared about how it looked to themselves. And that’s just simply awesome.
