We saw few people out and about on Sunday; there were few if any homeless people about and there was minimal activity in parks (few parks too actually). The drab dreariness was ....punctured with a most miserable assortment of collected and rejected Buddhist statues. A backhoe to the head of Hotei....(ironically the Buddhist god of happiness) the Shichi-fukujin dumped. It irritated me that they would be disrespected like this - gathered and imprisoned in a junkyard; it reminded me of the faces of Buddha on the pagodas in Kaifen that were scratched out as part of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Hiro's contempt was reserved for the nouveau riche attitudes of the people who had bought them like amulets only to discard them down the track... But perhaps, as Japan downsizes, consideration needs to be given to finding resting grounds for no longer needed statues of Buddhist and Shinto deities... This isn't a fitting end.
Hiro's contempt was reserved for the nouveau riche attitudes of the people who had bought them like amulets only to discard them down the track... But perhaps, as Japan downsizes, consideration needs to be given to finding resting grounds for no longer needed statues of Buddhist and Shinto deities... This isn't a fitting end.
Thank you to Rurousha for the advice that it was Hotei, I had thought it was Daikoku-ten.
3 comments:
Japan's gods are now being mass-produced. Thank you, consumer culture.
I get a sense of déjà vu so often during my temple-hunting excursions, because the (modern) statues all look the same.
Odd collection of statues, this. You've got the lucky seven plus a lion-dog thingie plus ... what's that creature with the scales on the back? Dinosaur?
That was what Hiro's take on it was really - that they are prostituted good luck charms - that perhaps didn't come through with the goods.
It is an odd collection - it could belong to a Chinese restaurant... most likely a hotch potch from here and there. I'm not sure what the dinosaur-esque one is ...
There's a certain gaucheness about it, but even though it might be revenge of the gods, it's still an undignified existence /demise.
This almost does seem a bit disrespectful to the different gods being displayed in stone. It almost seems like a purgatory for wayward gods.
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