Thursday, December 30, 2021

Japanese Architecture of the Kyoto Path 京都小道の日本建築


Kyoto (used to be the capital of Japan) is a city on the island of Honshu. It's famous for its numerous classical Buddhist temples, as well as gardens, imperial palaces, Shinto shrines and traditional so-called wooden houses.

The red gates are interesting in Kyoto. Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社, Fushimi Inari Taisha) is an important Shinto shrine in southern Kyoto. It is famous for its thousands of vermilion torii gates, which straddle a network of trails behind its main buildings.

Since ancient times, the so-called "vermilion" color was regarded as the color of blood, thus the color of life. It was used to paint temples and the carriages of the emperor, and as the printing paste for personal seals. It was also used for unique red calligraphic ink reserved for emperors.

The torii, often painted bright red, demarcates the boundary between the sacred space of the shrine and ordinary space. Torii also identify other sacred spots, such as a mountain or rock. Torii (gateway) at the entrance to a Shintō shrine on Mount Hakone, east-central Honshu, Japan.

In Japan, red is a symbol of fire and the sun, which is also considered as the color of life, which has a function to reject evil spirits, danger, and bad luck. It is believed that the red torii in front of a shrine wards off evil spirits, danger, and dangerous bad luck.

Fushimi Inari Shrine is famous for it's 10,000 gates but really there are over 32,000 gates and sub-gates called torii in Japanese.

Black color (Kuro) represents a powerful and tough image, as you can see the black belt in Judo and Karate athletes. It also represents evil and destruction.

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