https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15066086
"KUMAGAYA, Saitama Prefecture—Since her inauguration as chief priest of
Suwajinja shrine here in the latter half of the 1980s, Shoko Koshiba had always
felt there was something wrong from above.
The ceiling of Suwajinja’s “haiden” worship hall features 15 paintings placed
like panels in a wooden grid consisting of three rows of five pictures each.
But whenever she peered up at the ceiling, the paintings seemed out of place,
and the rectangular display looked somewhat like an unfinished edge-match
puzzle.
The ceiling art was blown away when a typhoon obliterated the shrine’s roof in
September 1966. The paintings were all recovered and reinstalled the following
year.
About 20 years after that, Koshiba, now 78, became head priest of the shrine.
Koshiba’s grandfather was the shrine’s chief priest when the destructive
typhoon hit. But he never told her about the original arrangement of the
pictures, and no photos of it remained, either.
The paintings each measure 90 centimeters by 90 cm.
Koshiba immediately saw that some of the pictures were lined up vertically
while others were arranged horizontally.
In addition to this inconsistent pattern, the painting bearing the artist’s
signature was oddly located at the center of the grid.
Some of the pictures combine plants and animals, including camellia and a
starling as well as bamboo and a tiger. Others portray sacred beasts, like the
phoenix.
All of the paintings have faded so much that their surfaces appear whitish.
Koshiba learned that children would often play at the shrine and lie on the
worship hall’s floor to rest.
However, no one in the nearby community could remember the pre-typhoon
arrangement of the paintings."
Via Muse, who wrote "So cool article about Japanese temple art. MYSTERY
SOLVED!"
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
