After all my talk about the failure of Korea's restoration/preservation projects, i've been a bit nervous about Japan... I mean, Japan holds such a large place in our mythification of Asia that I'm not sure if one can truly remove themselves from the experienced knowledge that they're seeing JAPAN. Will i be able to "objectively judge" (i.e. judge from my subjective aesthetic values) what i see? Or will i be so psyched about how cool Japan is that i'll just fawn away, much like a reporter covering the Obama campaign? (i try hard to keep my material fresh and topical, fyi.)
SO, with that out of the way, i will say that Dazaifu certainly felt a lot more authentic than almost anything in Korea.
Maybe it was the plum blossoms? Or is it a stone vs wood thing? Or maybe its just a "this ain't Korea so Hell Yeah" sort of thing.
One clear difference is the quality/style of things you can buy around the shrines. In Korea the stalls around historical sights were limited to street food and children's toys like battle axes and squeaky hammers. Random.
But in Dazaifu there were stores with enormous beautiful 3000 dollar hand carved wooden sculptures. There were hand made tea pots and intricate tiny cloth dioramas depicting traditional Japanese life. And these weren't kitsch or tchotchke or anything... at least i can't imagine a handcrafted doll the size of my thumb, meant for a home shrine and costing 45 dollars, being considered 'kitsch.'
In Korea, I found the lack of anything worth buying with a 'cultural personality' strange, but i didn't really hold it against the place. I'm ready to do that now.
Also, Japan has this:
btw, that giant Luke Skywalker riding the Tauntaun is only $29... ebay anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment