Japan's tourism boom, imperial temples, oni demons and power pagodas

A horrible oni demon mask kawara roof tile.

Japan is unique in the world of travel for a couple of reasons. First, it has what most of Southeast Asia's 3-4 billion people don't have: empty coastlines, forgotten forests, and towns and villages that take you back 100 years or more. Second, Japan is an island nation and nearly 75% of international tourists visiting Japan see places on narrow routes that link Tokyo to Kyoto or Osaka. This means that Japanese tourism for gaijin or foreigners has only gotten started. The island of Shikoku, facing the open Pacific to the south and Honshu to north, is still completely off the beaten track. I get maybe 2 Shikoku clients a year out of the 40 or so Japan private tour package clients I work with annually. Kyushu is much more trafficked but not by Europeans and North Americans.

Fukuoka International Airport is directly connected to those 3-4 billion Southeast Asian tourists (at best, only 10% of those people can afford a Japan holiday). The third distinction that makes Japan so attractive to foreigners is its extreme exotic allure. Remember, the French routinely refer to Japan as Planet Japan! Combine almost infinite demand with Japan's nearly infinite old-world and natural places and it's mysterious allure and you have a sustainable tourism industry. And just in time! Japan is the world's fastest ageing society. It shrank from about 133 million to 121 million in the last decade or so! Some Japanese mathematicians have calculated the year when there will be no Japanese people at all!

Here is a superb example of what Japan is offering the world of travel, the moss garden offerings at Konsho-ji Temple, 30-40 min. east of Kyoto Station by fast train. This Shiga Prefecture, Ritto City temple has more than 70 different kinds of moss on its grounds. The temple even offers "moss study & maintenance fieldwork" experiences. This Instagram video gives you a good idea: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3FPQ1ihkQA/ . And this website is how you can book this experience: https://www.tateba-ritto.com/inbound/ .

And, odd as it may seem, the temple also offers "moss Zen & yoga" experiences. The temple is a short stroll from Japan's biggest freshwater lake, Lake Biwa and JR Ritto Station. The moss serenity of Konsho-ji Temple sounds like the best place to go when you need to shed stress. A place to heal when you think about it. Learn more!

The rest of this post consists of covers:

Shiga's Imperial monzeki Enman-in Temple
Oni demons in Japanese art, theater, and legend
Japan's pagodas: rare, powerful Buddha bone towers

Content by Ian Martin Ropke, owner of Your Japan Private Tours (est. 1990). I have been planning, designing, and making custom Japan private tours on all five Japanese islands since the early 1990s. I work closely with Japan private tour clients and have worked for all kinds of families, companies, and individuals since 1990. Clients find me mostly via organic search, and I advertise my custom Japan private tours & travel services on www.japan-guide.com, which has the best all-Japan English content & maps in Japan! If you are going to Japan and you understand the advantages of private travel, consider my services for your next trip. And thank you for reading my content. I, Ian Martin Ropke (unique on Google Search), am also a serious nonfiction and fiction writer, a startup founder (NexussPlus.com), and a spiritual wood sculptor. Learn more!

Shiga's Imperial monzeki Enman-in Temple for sleeping & experiences

There said to be approximately two hundred thousand temples in Japan. Among these there are only seventeen known as Monzeki temples. Enman-in in Otsu (in Shiga-ken just east of Kyoto) is one. Monzeki temples are temples of the highest-rank, having the special role of holding services to commemorate the souls of Japan's successive Emperors.

Enman-in is situated almost in the center of the Japanese Archipelago, near the shores of Japan's largest lake, Lake Biwa, about twenty-minutes drive or eight kilometers east from Kyoto.

Enman-in Temple was founded nearly 1,050 years ago. With its long history, Enman-in stands out among the many temples of Japan; it is particularly well-known for its superb collection of works by the famous Edo Period painter, Maruyama Okyo. The temple covers an area of roughly 40,000 square meters, comprised of the Shinden (shrine), a beautiful building designated by the State as an important cultural asset, Fusuma-e (sliding door paintings) painted 400 years ago in the style of the Kano school, and the Garden, counted among the most beautiful of Japanese gardens. With these and many other buildings besides, Enman-in is truly a magnificent temple.

Many people come to the temple for counselling or study, and its adherents are already in excess of 300,000. Domyo Miura, the 56th monzeki of Enman-in, ranks as the highest priest of his kind in the country; he has made great contributions to the field of modern education.

Enman-in has long supported and protected the traditional arts of Japan and has taught and encouraged their practice among its own members. It is the feeling of the people running this unique, living cultural institution that the benefits to be derived from the practice of these arts should be made available to a larger number of people. Enman-in embodies the essence of the Buddhist spirit as a center for the arts, culture and religion.

Today, Enman-in offers seminars on the traditional Japanese arts: instruction in Zen meditation, chado (tea ceremony), shodo (calligraphy), kado (flower arrangement), kodo (the art of fragrance), and kiko (Chinese Art of Breathing).

And you can sleep at this temple which is a rare experience most foreign tourists associate with Koyasan, the mountain-top Shingon headquarters SE of Osaka.

For more information about the experiences and sleeping options offered at Enman-in Temple: https://enman-inn.com/ ; Tel: 077-522-3690 (Note: This temple still uses a fax machine so if you have one . . .).

All about Japan's oni demons in Japanese art, theater, and legend

Oni demons are a fixture in Japanese art, theater, history and legend. Parents still keep disobedient children in line with the threat of an Oni Visitation. To mime horns on the head about someone means they are 'angry like an oni'. Malevolent or merely mischievous, oni are always ugly. They are vaguely human but with horns, fangs, hideous faces, claws and skin of red or blue. A tigerskin loincloth, symbol of savage strength, is their only covering. They often wield magic wooden mallets or clubs.

The 2nd century 'Kojiki' (A Record of Ancient Matters) placed prototypical oni in an Underworld that accommodated the dead without discretion. Early female shikome demons, grotesque but not necessarily evil, evolved into a pantheon of demonesses, the most dangerous being the Hannya. Jealousy could turn any woman into one of these horned witches, capable of the most dreadful acts. The 10th century tale 'Rashomon' has the people of Kyoto terrorized by a hannya haunting the city's Rashomon gate. None dared venture out after dark. One warrior vows to kill her, then falls for a typical ruse. Transformed into a young beauty, the hannya reverts to demonic form when he draws close. He manages to amputate her arm and escape, to be taken in yet again by a mysterious 'elderly relative' who gains access to his home and retrieves the arm.

Brute force replaced subterfuge as oni later became masculinized. The nasty red cannibal Shuten Doji, in the 'Tale of Mount Oe', plagued the populace from his mountain eyrie, kidnapping and devouring hapless victims, among other pranks. The great warrior Minamoto-no-Yorimitsu is summoned from Kyoto to dispatch him. This time it is the good guy who dons disguise, as a mountain priest, to pay a neighborly visit for a friendly drink. After sharing a blood cocktail, Yorimitsu slips Shuten Doji some drugged sake. The oni falls drunk, and Yorimitsu attacks, decapitating his foe.

In the 11th century, unsteady politics meant dramatic military expansion, creating a new warrior class. Heroes mighty enough to overcome supernatural opponents offered proof of authority's triumph over chaos. Any worthy counter to these invincibles had to be equally impressive, as evil as they were virtuous, so the variety and monstrosity of oni increased too. With the spread of esoteric Buddhism came the Underworld as Hell, a horrible place of punishment. In alarming and edifying 'Hell Scrolls' oni were the servants of Enma, Monarch of Hell, often flanked in depictions by hideous red and blue demons ready to draw sinners down to judgement. The unearthly fiendishness of oni was never greater. The extremely popular Shoki, the 'Demon Queller' shared the stage with oni in Buddhist art. His maiden performance was an 8th century Chinese legend, in which an emperor, his dreams tormented by a prankish demon, is astonished by the appearance of a gargantuan bearded figure who slaughters the intruders without blinking. This is Shoki. Once a maligned scholar who took his life in despair, he's back in supernatural form after posthumous promotion to fight evil. Reappearing in Japanese Buddhist art, Shoki was kept busy quelling a deluge of odious oni.

Oni got to even the score in the 17th century, when the military softened and a frivolous merchant class flourished. Coming to the human world, devils parodied the decadence of bureaucrats, samurai and religion. Woodblock prints show skinny oni teasing a bumbling Shoki, irritated oni hiding from airborne beans, roguish oni visiting brothels and wandering oni 'priests' begging for alms. Contemporary robot culture, in comics and animation, is dense with their offspring. The oni dances of Setsubun are the perfect place to be frightened and amused by these creatures.

Japan's pagodas: rare, powerful and home to Buddha bones

The quintessential postcard view of historic Japan: a grid of medieval streets bustling with craftsmen, courtesans, and passing warriors; serenely watching over all from the crest of a mountain, a pagoda. Real or imagined, this is the Japan made popular by decades of corny movies and cheap souvenirs. The pagoda is the ultimate Oriental touch.

The Japanese pagoda is a direct descendant of the stupa, an Indian mausoleum that contained the bones of saints. More than a mere tomb, the edifice was meant to represent the cosmos in miniature; seem from above, it reveals a mandala with a vastly extended third dimension.

Originally, stupas consisted of three parts: a stylobate, or wide masonery base; a tower shaft; and a top decoration, usually metal. The pattern was modified in each oriental country which adopted Buddhism--China, Tibet, Nepal, Burma, Korea, Thailand--but the basic three-part formula was unchanged. The curved roof is a Chinese addition, either a hang-over from pre-Buddhist era fortifications, or an attempt to imitate the horns of a beast and impale evil spirits.

The first pagodas went up in the Nara Period (645-783 AD) when Buddhism and mainland Asian culture flowed into Japan, and a few of the great temples from that time survive to this day. Japanese pagodas, being wooden, are lighter than their mainland precursors. Running through their centers from the uppermost roof to base is a single massive column that rests on a foundation stone, beneath which are interred relics which represent the bones of Buddha. Originally the central structure of a monastery, the pagoda's role became more ornamental than functional as Buddha images and the halls that housed them took center stage.

Pagodas are not all alike. The proportions of the pagoda of Nara's Horyuji are considered perfect by the experts, although it is not as tall as others. The eave projections and floor heights differ on each floor. The Eastern Tower of Yakushi-ji, also in Nara, is three storied, but the arrangement of eaves makes it appear to be six-tiered. It is probably the oldest pagoda in Japan that is not an exact copy of a Chinese model. In other words, it is here that the Japanese style began to emerge.

Another noteworthy pagoda that can be seen on a day trip from Kyoto (if one makes an early start) is the exquisite example at Muro-ji, in rural Nara. It is a small-scale five-tiered construction from the Konin Period (784-897). Its most outstanding feature is the sorinto pinnacle, unique in that it ends in a circular canopy protecting a phial of ambrosia.

The architecture of the later Kamakura Period (1186-1392) was also influenced by the mainland, but by that time China was well into its Sung Dynasty, and the styles were more sombre and heavy. The Taho-to pagoda of Ishiyama-dera, in nearby Otsu, is an example.

Today seven major pagodas exist right in Kyoto, not to mention any number of minor ones, including the stone ornamental variety found in gardens. Great pagodas can still be seen at Kiyomizu, To-ji, Eikan-do, Jiho-ji, and Hokai-ji temples in urban Kyoto; at Kozan-ji in the west; and at Daigo-ji in the east. In the countryside south of Uji, archaic stone and timber pagodas survive at Joruri-ji and Gansen-ji.

There were more: the Chinese character for pagoda, to ( ), remains in many place-names around the city--the only thing left of what was once a magnificent tower, brought down by some violent episode in Kyoto's past. Local addresses tell us that one existed at Saito ('The Pagoda of the West') near what is now the South Kyoto Expressway Interchange; at To-no-Sumi ('Corner of the Pagoda') just south of the Omiya-Hachijo intersection; at To-no-Moto ('The Foot of the Pagoda') and To-no-Mori ('The Forest of the Pagoda'), both near the former river port of Kami Toba; and at To-no-Shima ('Island of the Pagoda') in Uji.

Yoshimitsu, greatest of the Ashikaga line of Shoguns and the builder of the Golden Pavilion, had a huge and elaborate tower constructed in Shokoku-ji Temple behind Doshisha University. Today the only reminder of its former glory is a place-name, To-no-Dan ('Rostrum of the Pagoda').

Shiga's Imperial monzeki Enman-in Temple
Oni demons in Japanese art, theater, and legend
Japan's pagodas: rare, powerful Buddha bone towers