changing impressions of Japan

Through the class, Visual Anthropology of Japan, the changes which happened to me was that I’ve got to see the stuffs around myself critically having wonder. Around the time that I started this kind of activity, I didn’t have any habit to take a picture constantly and any idea how to deal with that unfamiliar subject, so I guess the things that I tried to capture at the beginning was the major representative Japanese culture, like this photo, or the scenery apparently recognized as Japan, but I just realized I could find something that really represent Japan easier by getting some ideas to compare Japan with others and objectively seeing something Japanese thinking how “Gaizins” would feel about it because, for native Japanese me, it takes a long way to have a wonder in my life. 

I ran into it at Hirakata station. It is the umbrellas for someone who doesn’t carry it when it rains from lovely consideration. I thought it represented kindness of Japanese.

Another thing that I learned through the blog activity was the importance and respect for neighbors. Before I start blogging, neighbors were just neighbors, and I was thinking I would not get anything from them. When I had research for blog post 2 and 7, I had the chances well enough to talk with the neighbors who were so familiar with the area. They always gave me some direction or deep ideas that could be helpful to get familiar with the place more than I research by myself, and, to be honest, I was getting to find the interaction with the neighbor fun these days. When they tell the histories or background behind the blog topic, I could know how they felt then and the notion which included others’ who live around there also at the meantime. That made my understanding for my topic deeper and reasonable, and I felt like I was watching a short documentary movie and thought to collect information through a neighbor is the only thing Japanese can do, but one thing I regret is that I was short of the ability to write it down on the blog. I feel sorry for that. Anyway, it was good to get the opportunity to face and think of my own culture and find the method to reach, abstract subject, Culture. 

全興寺（Zenkozi）in 平野市(Hiranoshi)

This time I tried to learn something I never knew then I decided to visit here, “Zenkozi” in “Hirano”. Lots of old-Japanese style buildings and townscapes still remain there, and what I had research was in there. This place is kind of famous for mysterious hell touring.

It looked ordinary before the gate, but I got something pretty interesting even for the Japanese me inside there. What came in my sight at first was a tiny “Oni” (means like an ogre or a devil). That bit amazed me because basically we don’t see the “Oni” sort of things in regular temples in Japan. According to the chief priest there, the temple teaches people what heaven and hell are like and how to get judged to go to either, and he also said “by seeing “Zigokudo”(means hell), you’re going to get some direction to go to heaven after dead”. 

This is a request from the temple to parents which says in short “this is just to tell children the importance of life and not to do bad things, and Don’t use it to scared children in terms of education”  

Inside of “Zigokudo”, you can see “Enmadaiou” (a god judging which people to go, heaven or hell), “Oni”, and Buddha- like dolls. When you push the button or hit the bell below “Enmadaiou”, hell story begins in the weird place. The story was mainly about several brutal tortures to punish someone who did bad thing during they were alive and what the children who died before their parents die are going to take from “Oni”. It is said, in the hell, if the children who died before their parents die want to see the parents again, they have to pile up rocks to some level of height, but “Oni” is monitoring them doing through whole way, then the time they nearly reach at the end, “Oni” pops up to them and ruin their effort. “Oni” makes them do so over and over.  

It says “If you press the button, then hell starts” I doubt it.