| ▲ | Japan's most sacred Shinto shrine rebuilt every 20yrs for more than a millennium(apnews.com) |
| 42 points by petethomas a day ago | 24 comments |
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| ▲ | tt_dev a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| > "Asked about his relationship to the cypress trees that are cultivated for the shrine, Ikeda, the lumber expert, had a one-word answer: “Deep.” Forty years ago, when he was 24, he drove his grandfather to participate in the tree-felling ceremony. “He said to me, ‘Do you know that the trees cry?’ “I answered, ‘No way, how could a tree cry?’” But as they watched woodsmen chop down the cypress, “the sound of the axes echoed across the mountains, and after about an hour, when the axe struck the core of the tree, the scent of the cypress filled the air, flowing like blood,” he said. At the final axe stroke, as the wood snapped, “the sound it made was like a shriek, a high-pitched ‘keee’ sound, and then the tree fell with a thunderous thud. In that moment, I thought, ‘Ah... it really cried.’ I felt as if the tree wept, mourning its own life, as if it knew its life was precious.”" This was like sipping hot tea in the rain. |
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| ▲ | bdcravens a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > “Twenty years from now, the older generation — our grandfathers — will likely no longer be here. And those of us who are still young now will then see our grandchildren involved in the next” version of Ise, said Yosuke Kawanishi, a Shinto priest whose family company crafts miniature replicas of the shrine. “After 20 years, the shrine we are building will have deteriorated quite a bit. But instead of thinking, ‘It’s a shame to tear down something we worked so hard to build,’ we think, ‘It’s been 20 years, so we want the deity to move into a beautiful, fresh, new shrine.’” Reminds me of what Jefferson said about the US constitution, but it should be rewritten every 19 years |
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| ▲ | krapp a day ago | parent [-] | | >‘It’s a shame to tear down something we worked so hard to build,’ we think, ‘It’s been 20 years, so we want the deity to move into a beautiful, fresh, new shrine.’” Imagine how annoying that would be for an eternal being - 20 years might as well be 20 minutes. You just got settled in and the humans start moving stuff again! | | |
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| ▲ | dereg a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Young man me likely would have thought, “wow, cool tradition!” Old man me thinks “$390 million? How are they funding this?! That seems like a massive sum of money to throw down the drain every 20 years.” Then I did the back of envelope math. Assuming 20% comes from donations, then all you’d need is a $380m fund earning a real 3% to fund the building of the next temple. That’s very doable. |
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| ▲ | prmoustache a day ago | parent | next [-] | | 9 years to build something that only last 20 seems a bit weird though. | | |
| ▲ | anvandare a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The shrine is not the shrine. The shrine is the previous generation teaching the next to build the shrine. So if the shrine were to fall, then the shrine would eventually fall. That is why the shrine must keep falling, so that it can keep being rebuilt, and so the shrine keeps standing. | |
| ▲ | packetlost a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A big part of the benefit seems to be in ensuring the next generation is capable of the craftsmanship necessary to ensure the shrine continues to stand. If you don't continue to rebuild, then the skills atrophy until they're lost forever. | | |
| ▲ | samarthr1 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is something us Indian's have been unfortunate to find out. Our stonemanship has unfortunately disappeared from lack of state support in the times the subcontinent was under foreign rule. | | |
| ▲ | mrlonglong 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Over in Europe, when the Notre Dame cathedral burned down, ancient 13th century skills had to be revived to rebuild it. Even the lead needed to be made traditionally, noone else in the world except a small company in the UK who could. Ten tons of UK lead now adorns the roof. |
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| ▲ | lo_zamoyski a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What makes something weird? Something is “weird” when it is absurd, which is to say something that is aimless or has an aim that is not in the service of an objective good. There’s a deviance from the nature of the thing, like intentionally growing a tumor on your forehead or having a tumor growing out of your forward and then happily refusing to have it removed. Otherwise, what is said of things that are merely unconventional. So in this case, is there not a purpose? Is the purpose not spiritual and instructive in some sense? Are you not imposing an inappropriate tacit goal onto this practice? Or perhaps you find it weird because it is nowhere to be found within your conventions? | | |
| ▲ | prmoustache a day ago | parent [-] | | > Or perhaps you find it weird because it is nowhere to be found within your conventions? probably. |
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| ▲ | Yeul a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not at all unusual. In Europe we have 500 year old buildings that need constant renovations. Finish one part of the building and the next part needs doing. And on and on it goes. | |
| ▲ | burnt-resistor a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Regarding the Ise Shrine (伊勢神宮), the practice is called Sengū (遷宮) related to preserving mystical spirits, supporting trades, tradition, and respecting the cyclical impermanence of all things. By contrast, Hōryū Gakumonji (法隆学問寺) is a 1350+ years old wooden structure more closely related to the themes of imported Buddhism long before the shinbutsu bunri (神仏分離) but in Japanese style. There are/were very large buddha figures carved into rock throughout Iran, Afghanistan, China during the Mongol period and also semi-contemporaneously c. ~7th century Japan's Usuki Stone Buddhas (臼杵磨崖仏). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine#Rebuilding_the_Shri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seng%C5%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dry%C5%AB-ji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinbutsu_bunri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuki_Stone_Buddhas | |
| ▲ | kylebenzle a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | readthenotes1 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Roughly $20M/year for 1300 years. That really does add up to quite a bit of opportunity cost. | | |
| ▲ | Ekaros a day ago | parent [-] | | Makes Stonehenge looks like most sensible approach. Build it one time and then it will be there. Not that Egyptians with stone in dessert is bad either. |
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| ▲ | tengwar2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's always interesting to read of "soft" things like customs lasting, as opposed to "hard" archaeology and architecture. While far simpler, one of my favourites is the Uffington White Horse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffington_White_Horse), which has been regularly re-packed with chalk for at least 2500 years. |
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| ▲ | mrlonglong 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | That was a 17th century insult aimed at Oliver Cromwell. There's no evidence it's older than the 1600s. | | |
| ▲ | tengwar2 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | You are mistaken. It was dated by the lab I did my DPhil at (Research Laboratory for Archaelogy and the History of Art, Oxford University). |
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| ▲ | officerk a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nice read. Symbolizes the death and replacement that we see in nature while the spirit/god is constant. Seems very appropriate for the Shinto faith. |
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| ▲ | ljsprague a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [flagged] |
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| ▲ | exe34 a day ago | parent [-] | | Do you turn every conversation into one about immigrants? Japan is one of the countries that has chosen population collapse over immigration. | | |
| ▲ | ljsprague 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I pretty much do on this site, for sure; it's relevant to everything political or cultural. (They've chosen potential population collapse over assured population replacement.) |
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