Shrines, Festivals and Everyday Beauty

Sushi, tatami, festival floats and woodblock prints look very different, but all had to be made, exchanged and used. This first reading introduces familiar things before following three connected threads: belief, the calendar and the arts.

What distinguishes a Shinto shrine from a Buddhist temple? Kasuga Taisha and Kōfuku-ji in Nara make a useful starting point. They had different rituals, yet shared patrons and religious practices over a long history. Their relationship helps explain why a torii, a statue or a lantern cannot tell the whole story on its own.

Religious practice also belonged in homes and streets. New Year decorations, dolls, carp streamers and festivals gave the year its anticipated moments. Follow residents around Edo’s Nihonbashi through that cycle, noticing who supplied the materials and labour—and how dates in the old calendar differ from dates today.

A tea bowl is held, a stone garden is viewed from a veranda, and a print can be bought and examined at home. Those uses shape what we notice. This piece slows down the act of looking and brings potters, carvers, hosts and audiences back into the picture.

If the tea gathering interests you, spend a little longer with Sen no Rikyū. His life leads from Sakai’s merchant community into the circles of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Choices of utensils and guests belonged alongside the demands of powerful patrons: the quiet room was connected to politics outside.

The objects and occasions in these readings depended on people making, using and renewing them. Keep these connections in view as you choose what to read next.