Sake Casks at Meiji Shrine
Sake casks are not an uncommon sight at shrines in Japan. The ones at Meiji Jingu are quite impressive.
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Posts tagged meiji jingu
Momoteshiki (百々手式 or Japanese Archery Ritual)
More than a year ago I promised some photos from the Momoteshiki held at Meiji Jingu on Seijin No Hi. The dress was amazing as was their skill. Hopefully it won’t be another year before I break out another of these photos.
Year of the Tiger ema
Here is a closeup of the tiger (寅) ema discussed in yesterday’s entry.
The stamp on the lower right of the ema is the official one of Meiji Jingu. It says Meiji Jingu (from top to bottom and right to left 明治神宮) in funky script.
Meiji Shrine Gate on New Year’s Day
The south gate is the main approach to the Meiji Shrine. Normally you can walk right up to this point, but on New Year’s Day it may take an hour or more to reach this area from the Harajuku Station. If you want to avoid the crowd, there are other entrances (like from Yoyogi Station, past the archery area and through the west gate).
Notice the giant ema (wooden wish plaques or 絵馬) and arrows (hamaya or 破魔矢) on the gate. The shrine does a massive business in selling smaller versions of these items (and other good luck trinkets) for the first week of the year. Some of these amulets are to be brought back to the shrine the next year and burned. People pay to have this service performed as well. How is that for a business model? Sell your customer something and then charge them in a year to destroy the product. When they come back to have last year’s goods burned, you sell them the same product again for the next year and the cycle repeats. Nice.
For 2010 the giant ema featured a tiger since it was the year of the tiger. I’m guessing that for 2011 a similar ema with a rabbit was on the gate since 2011 is the year of the rabbit.
Meiji Jingu on New Year’s Day
I have braved the New Year’s Day crowds at Meiji Jingu twice in my life–1989 and 2010. The place and number of people don’t seem to have changed. The crowd control measures sure have.
Hatsumode (初詣) is the name of this first shrine visit of the new year. Technically, this wasn’t my first shrine visit in 2010 as I was at Zojoji much earlier in the day.
Japanese Archery – Kyudo (弓道)
I read somewhere that on Coming of Age Day (成人の日, second Monday of January) there is an annual archery exhibition at Meiji Jingu (明治神宮). My class was cancelled for the holiday so we went to take a look. Unfortunately, there are no signs and we got bad directions a couple of times. It turns out there were two different archery activities going on (but we didn’t realize that until later). Anyway, we found this one (on the north side, much closer to Yoyogi Station than Harajuku Station), and it was fun to watch.
Each archer fires at their own pace after going through a series of ritualistic steps. They get two arrows each. I believe only those who hit the target twice are invited to stick around for the finals. I don’t know this for certain as we didn’t stay until the end, but some people were leaving while others weren’t.
In the photo above you can see the results of a couple of archers who had to be thinking “if only…” It doesn’t matter which part of the target you hit. Dead center (a bullseye) counted the same as an arrow stuck in the outer fringe.
There were two, really amazing archers. One was the guy above and another was a lady. Why were they amazing? Both were shaking like crazy until a split second before they let their arrows fly. One of the lady’s arrows actually fell to her feet while she was loading it she was shaking so badly. But both hit the target with both of their arrows. From the way they were vibrating I would have bet they would have hit someone in the audience before they hit the target.
After departing we found the place doing momoteshiki (百々手式) and caught the tail end. Pictures from that more stylish event will be coming soon.