Yakushima is an island 60 kilometers south of Kyushu, most of which is registered as a World Heritage Site on account of its primeval forest featuring giant cedars, known as Yakusugi. These magnificent giants are literally thousands of years … Read the rest
Itsukushima Jinja is Japan’s premier World Heritage shrine. Inscribed by Unesco in 1996, it was cited for ‘setting traditional architecture of great artistic and technical merit against a dramatic natural background and thereby creating a work of art of incomparable … Read the rest
On a recent outing to Yoshino, south of Nara, I discovered that there were more World Heritage Sites than I had realised. Readers of the blog might remember that I had compiled a list of shrines recognised by Unesco’s … Read the rest
An article in the Daily Yomiuri by naturalist and cultural anthropologist, Kevin Short, talks of the mythological connections of Mt Tsukuba, not far from Tokyo.
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Mt. Tsukuba’s twin peaks represent Japan’s mythical married couple
Kevin Short / Daily Yomiuri … Read the rest
Shirakawa-go is a World Heritage Site in the Gifu mountains, notable for its gassho-zukuri (prayer-hands) housing, so-called because the tall roofs resemble hands at prayer. The architecture developed because of the heavy snowfalls, which could crush normal roofs and … Read the rest
My local shrine at Shimogamo has been busily doing itself up in recent years to appeal to tourists, and I was impressed on visiting one of its subshrines, Kawai Jinja, at the transformation that had taken place. A new lick … Read the rest
My local shrine, Shimogamo Jinja in Kyoto, is presently putting on an art exhibition of ikebana. The displays line the entrance to the shrine, with some set against a backdrop of woods and others framed by the vermilion of … Read the rest
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