Hello again everyone! This is part of my massive blog update/overhaul, so you have already listened to this episode, feel free to scroll through the photos and move to the next post! If this is your first time here, welcome! Feature Image from 663highland, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons.
Fleeing fox spirit as Lady Kayō depicted in Hokusai’s Sangoku Yōko-den (三国妖狐伝)
Katsushika Hokusai – scanned from ISBN 4-3360-4636-0. (Public Domain)
TRANSCRIPT:
Let’s take a hike and see the sights, It’s time for Architecture, Coffee, & Ink.
30 second Intro song
Hello, this is Hollywood C. and you’re listening to Architecture, Coffee, & Ink. A podcast dedicated to introducing concepts, detailing out designs, and tackling the architecture you might not realize the meaning behind. I’m your hostess and I am here today to start introducing you to the designs that make you wonder why.
tag line: So I ask you to brew your coffee, grab your sketch book and pen, and let’s begin.
Good Morning Everyone! To all my listeners, old and new! If this is your first time, or you are a hardcore binger, welcome! This is the middle of a three episode week, where I am basically taking advantage of the fact it is Spring Break. Altogether the three mini-episodes will basically add up to double the content of a normal week, so normally, my episodes average to 30 minutes, with interview episodes being longer, but this week is basically an hour of content altogether. Normally, I give a spiel about how you can find all the sources on the blog, BUT because I am producing so many episodes at once, it’s better to say that the blog will be updated by Friday-so basically, please pretend it doesn’t exist until then. Yesterday, I was doing interviews for a chunk of the day, so I am still nice and pumped up, because I love talking to people. I also loved how many times I was able to say ‘spring break’ last episode. But I promise I won’t do that to everyone again. But remember everyone, as we begin, to always check your sources, check your facts, and most importantly, check me.
ウィキ太郎 Wiki Taro – Own work
Stone Jizos (stone statues of Kshitigarbha) before the “Sessho-seki” (Killing Stone), Nasu, Tochigi, Japan.
But, before the show begins, I am going to take a moment to focus onto a more serious topic. I have no doubt my listeners have been following the news in the past few weeks and are aware of the fighting ongoing between the Ukraine and Russia. I will be sharing some information on ways to help with war relief efforts from the Red Cross and a few others. If you can and feel called to donate and help, the information is currently on the Facebook page. I know that for some of my listeners, podcasts are a way to escape the news and reality for a few hours, but please at least send a kind thought, good karma, prayer, well wish, to all those who are affected by what is going on. If you ever know of similar efforts or would like to share a cause that I am not aware of, please always feel free to share them. But please remember that wars maybe waged by governments, but the casualties are always people. This message is going to be released in several episodes that are coming out in the future. So please, if you are able, see what efforts you can assist with that are in your area.
Okay, so I thought that given the more recent news, we clearly needed to detour into the breaking of the Killing Stone. If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry! That is what this episode is about in depth. But, in summary, a stone said to house a demon spilt open and released their terror onto the world. So, what does this have to do about Architecture? Well, my dear listeners, I have been looking for a reason to bring in the concept of cultural landscapes and this is that moment! I will say, as soon as I heard of the news, I thought I was quite clever texting my friends “well, the demon will just have to take a number and get in-line, because we’re still struggling through a pandemic and World War III” and then when researching the episode, I found like 400 different variations of that same joke online.
But, first, let’s define a cultural landscape. So, overall, a cultural landscape is a concept that originated more from the geography, anthropology, and ecology side of life, but as the field of Landscape Architecture has been evolving, we have begun to really embrace and understand the importance of this. Nowadays, you can go onto websites and find agencies like the National Parks Services in America, or governmental environmental agencies and find that several global governments or universities have some variation of it. I found multiple before I realized I was straying dangerously close to a rabbit hole. But, basically, it’s a landscape that has some form of cultural value. This can be due to religious significance, historical value, a significant person many have had an association with the site-which covers everything from prophets, to presidents, to individuals like Genghis Khan. What is essentially key to this concept is that it has value, to either the residents or individuals in proximity to the location. And that’s really where people struggle with the concept, because in everyday conversation, when people say value, they are referring to the economic value, capital, money, or decreasing/increasing property values. But here, think of value has having weight, importance, or significance. While it can also have economic value, that’s not the driving goal behind the importance of the landscape. A good portion of the time, this landscape will include natural resources, and animals. And can be either wild or domestic animals. But for today, understand that this landscape and location, fits, because it has historical, religious, cultural, and even emotional value. I would also like to make sure that everyone realizes that the value isn’t because some random individual 3 countries over declared it a cultural landscape, but because it was already valued and/or shaped by humans locally. One option is that landscape architects become stewards of this scape. There is also a Cultural Landscape Foundation, that lists the four different types of Landscapes: Vernacular, Ethnographic, Historic, and Designed. We are going to talk more about this next week, but for today, I feel like this is a good starting point for this topic. But, I don’t want to go into this so much that it detracts from the actual location we are talking about today.
Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archives has copies of the otogizōsh in which the tales of Tamamo-no-Mae 玉藻前 are discussed. The archives has the descriptions and translations of each of the pages of the manuscript of the story and includes some beautiful original illustrations. I wanted to point them out as a resource used, both because I am using translations, which all my long time listeners know that I always encourage everyone to double check, because they aren’t always accurate, even if I am just translating something directly. And also because, unlike other episodes where I spend more time per episode, I only started researching this when the news broke roughly 9 days ago from the time this episode is released. Again, if I accidentally mispronounce something, please understand that I am not doing it with any disrespect.
So, before we dive into the tales of Tamamo-no-Mae 玉藻前, an otogizōsh 御伽草子, are a prose narrative, from Japan, and were written during the Muromachi period predominantly, with some dating to the Edo Period. If you google that, there is an Anime and Manga with the same name, except the Otogi is separated from Zōsh. In fact, Wikipedia uses the two words separated with a hyphen, but some don’t. Tamamo-no-mae, is a kitsune, a fox spirit, that was old enough by the time the story begins, that they was able to shift into a beautiful woman and hide their nine-tails behind a beautiful visage, strong enough that they was able to enter as a courtesan of various kings court’s throughout China and Japan. A kitsune is a Yōkai, 妖怪, which I have seen translate into ‘demons’ but is closer to an all encompassing name that includes demons, spirits, and supernatural entities. They can be both positive or negative, but as you have probably guessed, this one is negative. Kitsune will often times be associated with an element, like fire, water, etc. and may several abilities associated with them. The older they are, the more tails they have, so in this case, Tamamo-no-Mae is already an old kitsune, and many-even the positive ones, are associated with trickery and mischief. They also have the ability to produce fox fire, and turn into a human/shapeshift once they reach a certain age, however, in many of the tales, including the story we are talking about today, they often times possess people instead, causing grief and torment.
Tamamo-no-Mae story starts in China, where they enter the court underneath the concubine Daji, and quickly became the favorite of King Zhou, the last king underneath the Shang Dynasty. Underneath this king, they caused the ruler to be so consumed with pleasing them, that the kingdom fell into neglect, and they were allowed to torture the people at leisure. Eventually, this led to enough unrest, that they were forced to flee, and from there a series of women are believed to be Tamamo-no-Mae, either possessed or were killed and replaced by the kitsune. Each woman is both devastatingly beautiful, and cruel, inspiring both terror and death. Other names include Lady Kayō of India, Baso Si again in China, and finally Tamamo-no-Mae in Japan underneath Emperor Toba. In India, thousands were killed and beheaded, while in some variations, they are associated as a consumer of human flesh. Depending on the myth it changes the reason why and who, in some myths its only young women, others its only men, reading all the stories together makes it sound like either an evolving spirit one that tires of the same thing. Each time they are defeated, they are driven away by either human forces, samurai, priests, or onmyōji which are practioners of protection, magic, divination, etc.
In the last, underneath the guise of Tamamo-no-Mae, they were exposed by a man who was able to tell who they really were, and after a battle, imprisoned, killed, or transformed in the rock in by Mount Nasu-dake, until a Buddhist monk Gennō bathed in the nearby springs, and purified himself enough to crack the rocks into pieces, scattering them across the lands, to make the return of Tamamo-no-Mae difficult. The two other locations believed to have been a part of this were Fukushima and Hiroshima. Each stone takes the name Sesshōseki, or killing stone, as the stone kills everyone in contact with it. Some of my sources believe that the cracking of the stone means that the spirit can now be allowed to roam again, once more taking on a woman’s visage, and starting a reign of terror much worse than seen before. Others believe that when the priest split the rock, while the stone itself is cursed to bring death to those who touch it, and sweeps evil into the surrounding landscape, the spirit itself was either cleansed or took a vow, that it would no longer bring pain and devastation.
Print by Toriyama Sekien
Toriyama Sekien (鳥山石燕, Japanese, *1712, †1788) – scanned from ISBN 4-336-03386-2.
Sesshō-seki (殺生石, the poisonous “killing stones” which Tamamo-no-Mae transformed into) from the Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (今昔百鬼拾遺)
This story and variations of it, have been circulating for a while, including at the Nasu Onsen, a hot springs resort, where the hot springs were discovered in during the Nara Period. Among the things included in the location, is a mixture of traditional and modern bath houses, as even though the terrain around the stone and across the mountains are noxious and sulphatic, the waters of the hot springs are restorative. The Nasu mountain range that the site calls home is a land formed by volcanoes-which are still active. Currently, you can still hike up to the stone and through the landscape, as well as go to the nearby shire. Before I discuss the shire, I do want to mention that if you have read the book The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Bashō, this is actually the same region, and in the book he describes the landscape in a way, that I can’t. I own a copy and it is 100% worth the read. I was introduced to it a general world literature class in undergrad, but I really enjoyed it.
So, when you see previous pictures of the stone, you will notice it is adorned in shimenawa and shide, or a rope and paper streamers, which is used to show the significance of the location. It also has a wooden railing and around wooden sign, denoting and warning visitors of the site. Each year, a ritual is conducted, where they attempt to appease the spirit. It starts at the Nasu Onsen Shrine, which I will post pictures of on the blog, as well. The valley is called, Sai no Kawara, is named after the location where souls of children wait in the underworld, so along the trail and route, you will often see the guardian, Jizō, with clothing attached, to honor those children who died, and provide an offering and cloth for the children. I mention this, because several of the sources I read merely described the statues quite rudely, clearly without bothering to figure out what they mean, so I want to warn anyone who researches further. Also in the area, there was a community undertaking to carve a 1000 of them, so this is an image that is both incredibly important, and a key part of the heritage of this location. But, apparently, a group made an app so you can experience the site in a new way, through AR. But the entire site mountain and surrounding hills is covered in areas dedicated to historic battles, hot springs, and religious worship. The Killing stone area itself, is a mixture of rocks jutting into the area, with sulfur dioxide and other gases, seeping in, filled with lava stones. Sometimes the gases will claim an unfortunate animal, adding to the lore around the site. The valley is broken up by wooden walkways and bridges, and well taken care paths. The shrine itself is breathtaking, with beautiful wooden construction, and embedded into the surroundings with a series of stone and markers to assist you on your climb. One thing I will mention, is that there are several interesting variation on names that show up between all of the websites for the locations we are talking about. So, there are actually a series of shrines across the region, and I am assuming that’s were a lot of the confusion is coming from. I myself spent a lot of time trying to verify that I had the right locations. The shrines are related together in a way, and one website said that there is about 80 shrines in total throughout the region.
日本語: 殺生石にて。所在地は栃木県那須町。
English: This is a complete original image ( no retouch, and no re-compression ).日本語: これは、原画像（加工無し、および再圧縮無し）です。
663highland, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
Apparently, cracks began to show up in the stone, and it is believed from a scientific approach that this allowed rainwater, inside, causing the stone to eventually split. The area was registered in 1957, and some media has reported that they are still deciding if they will repair the stone, or remove it, or whether to just leave the pieces as they fell. But personally, I would love to hike up and visit all of the sites in the region. But only time will tell if Tamamo-no-Mae will once again herald in a reign of terror, now freed from the stone.
But once again a big thank you to all my listeners! I will at some point update the Blog, by Friday, I mean, so please rate and review. If you liked it, loved it, hated it, let me know. I love feedback, and hearing from everyone, and more importantly, sparking conversation. I think everyone knows we have a Facebook page and group which is just under the same name as the podcast. https://architectureink.design.blog/, is the website, Everything will be linked in the show notes. Now, tomorrow, I will be posting the “Cryptid Architecture” episode! I posted the release schedule for the episodes this week on Facebook. But as always,
May your coffee mugs be full, and your ink wells never run dry.
(60 secs end song re-looped.)
SOURCES:
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