Careful there, I think your motorcycle is leaking oil on Heian history.
Next to the cigarette vending machine, between two parking lots on a sidestreet northeast of Senbon-Marutamachi is a marker showing a piece of foundation of the inner part of the original Heian Imperial Palace, from soon after Kyoto was officially founded in the 8th Century. This is north of Nijo Castle, so quite a bit west of the extant Imperial Palace. Related info here.
0 comments
Randy says:
Nov 9, 2004
I gotta ask… is that a Nazi-swastika on the pillar in front of the altar or is that one of the designs that happens to “resemble” one? I’ve seen and heard that that shape shows up all over Asian (in designs, prints, etc) but I also don’t know how much the 1930′s German culture permeated Japan… (No wrong answer on it, either – I’m just curious)
nils says:
Nov 9, 2004
Rest assured, there is no Nazi movement going on in Japan. The swastika is about 3,000 yeasrs old, and it’s not German, it’s Indian (the word ‘swastika’ is Sanskrit). You won’t go very far in Japan without seeing one, as the swastika (‘manji’) adorns every Buddhist temple, and has since long before Hitler. Also, the kanji 万 ‘man’ that means 10,000 is derived from the swastika, which is a symbol of powerful life energy and good luck, derived from a pictograph of the radiant sun. In 1996, my Mom, who suffered through the nazi occupation of Denmark, came to visit me in Japan, and she was stunned the first time she came face to face with a swastika at a roadside shrine, but then she was relieved to hear that it was an ancient and very positive religious symbol. it was on some American soldiers’ uniforms in WWI. Here’s a picture of some ancinet Indian coins with swastika. Microsoft got in trouble earlier this year when they released a font witha swastika in it, but a swastika is very useful in a japanese fontset because temples are indicated by swastika on maps.
The Son of Sam didn’t stain Christianity by claiming God told him to kill, and Hitler can’t stain Buddhism by trying to associate himself with its imagery.