This is the concluding excerpt from a book to be published by Stone Bridge in Novemer 2023 entitled Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan. It concerns the kamikaze museum at Chiran, on the way between the most southerly manned … Read the rest
Category: Zen (Page 1 of 4)
The small town of Shimabara has an unmanned station, yet the town boasts two major attractions. One is a castle, and the other a samurai district. In its heyday the district boasted 690 … Read the rest
Matsue is associated with the writer Lafcadio Hearn (aka Koizumi Yakumo), whose house near the castle can still be visited. It stands close to the Lafcadio Hearn Museum. (To read more of Hearn and his house, see here.)
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For the connections of Zen and Shinto, see the previous series of 22 postings starting here.
The extract below concerns a visit to the large Zen seminary outside Fukui City – Eihei-ji.
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It’s known that Shinto has strong connections with some of the martial arts. Aikido of course, which its founder Morihei Ueshiba openly stated was based on Shinto principles. He drew on traditional thinking in martial arts, for Shinto had played … Read the rest
Following on from the series investigating the links of Shinto and Zen, this piece from Wikipedia struck me as insightful about the architectural and aesthetic overlap between the two practices. It concerns the Katsura Imperial Villa (or Detached Palace) in … Read the rest
Reading Zen in the Rocks by Francois Bertbier (translated with a philosophical essay by Graham Parkes) Uni of Chicago Press, 2000
Understanding the role of rocks in Japanese culture, and specifically in Shinto, has been something of a quest for … Read the rest