Kato Mado Update

At least one reader asked to see pictures of the temple itself from yesterday's post, so I went back this afternoon to get a few more shots. Here's the view from just outside the main gate:

You can see the kato mado on either end of the main hall. The temple goes by the name of Shinkoji, or Pure Light Temple, and was originally constructed in the reign of the Emporer Koutoku (645 - 654 CE). The current structure dates from sometime after 1585 when a fire caused by war destroyed the original.

Shinkoji belongs to the Sōtō school of zen which practices shikantaza, a form of zazen often referred to as "just sitting."

In the past, Sōtō zen was derogatorily called "farmer zen" due to its widespread appeal — a term which seems appropriate out here in the "countryside."

I'd also like to happily report that this venerable temple has not yet made it onto Google maps — the English version at least. It's good to know there are still some quiet outposts which have escaped the monster's tentacles.

I'll leave you with a shot of some of the hand-carved scrollwork from the building you can see just peeping out on the left in the picture above.

Kato Mado 火頭窓

The straight line dominates Japanese architecture to such a degree that whenever I see curves or any sign of ornamentation, I'm either immediately repulsed or intrigued.

At one of our local temples I experienced the latter with these kato mado ("flame head windows.") With their scalloped tops and rounded corners they feel more Persian than Japanese.

Indeed, the kato mado came to Japan from China at the end of the Heian period (794 - 1185) reportedly via monks who were escaping a war with the Mongols that toppled the Sung Dynasty. (I'm guessing the monks carried the design in their heads, rather than the actual windows in their hands.) How and when the design reached China itself, or if it was an indigenous creation there, I don't know.

But according to people who study this sort of thing, the really radical aspect of this type of window in Japan was that it overturned the very notion of the window's function. Whereas previously there had been no real distinction between window and door, the kato mado, being an opening in a solid wall, directly focused the viewer's attention either inward from the outside and outward from the inside.

With the introduction of Taoist thinking and practices that came with the monks and their windows, the halls in the temples became more of places for meditation than they had been previously.

I especially like this second example, from one of the temple's outbuildings, with its bowing latticework creating uneven lines: