Ise holds one of the most important Shinto shrines in Japan. Enshrining the ancestral gods of the Imperial family, it has a long and varied political career. Such was its power that even stingy Oda Nobunaga felt obliged to donate huge sums of money to revive the custom of reconstructing the shrines -- an event that had not taken place throughout the previous 100 years.
This process of reconstruction is the theme of the present volume, as the subtitle attests: "ancient but new." The author finds this a "marvelous paradox, unparalleled anywhere in the world, namely brand new buildings that are more than 1,300 years old; new in material, but ancient in form and spirit."
Every 20 years on alternating plots, the main Ise shrine is torn down and a new one, in every way identical, is constructed next door. The next renewal, the 62nd, will take place in 2013. Though the Ise shrines are not the only ones to practice this kind of immortality (Kyoto's Kamo Shrines are supposed to be rebuilt every 50 years, Izumo Taisha every once in a while), it is the only one that has done so regularly.
Records suggest that since 690, both inner and outer shrines are rebuilt every 20 years (initially it was 19 years), except for that long hiatus that Nobunaga finally plugged. The reasons for such an extraordinary lineage are not, however, so apparent.
Certainly this kind of renewal is encountered elsewhere in Japanese history. At one early point, whole cities were razed and rebuilt, and there is the Japanese taste for attrition and perhaps consequent celebration of transience.
In addition, there is a strong belief in spiritual core integrity and a disbelief in mortal trappings. To use a contemporary -- if lurid -- example, when Yukio Mishima died calling upon the "Tenno," he did not mean Emperor Showa. He meant what we might call "tenno-ship," the continuing political reverence of the Imperial line.
Thus the ancient spirit of the shrine is continually renewed, but always the same. As a system for ensuring immorality, this may be profitably compared with, say, that of the pyramids of Egypt, which were constructed with the same end in mind. Their marble mantles have slipped off and the Sphinx has lost most of his/her face, while the Ise shrine remains the color of fresh-cut wood and smells like spring itself.
This "marvelous paradox" has inspired Svend Hvass, a well-known Danish architect, to create the sumptuous book under review. Having attended the 1973 and 1993 investitures, he became interested in the tradition and was inspired to re-create the experience of the paradox in book form.
Aided by the Danish State Art Foundation, he has constructed a narrative that is shaped like the ceremony itself: open-ended, double-headed, and filled with splendid pictures of the process, plus all sorts of details answering just about any question the viewer may have.
Architecturally, the finest book remains "Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture," by Kenzo Tange and Noboru Kawagoe, published in 1965. This new volume is certainly the best on the cultural aspects of the renewal ceremonies, however.
Cost is one topic. It runs to the equivalent of many millions of dollars, with all the lumber, labor, the fact that the "treasures" must be reduplicated as well. One can see why Nobunaga complained, and yet why he had to cough up. Also covered is what happens to the old lumber and the 20-year-old thatch. It is a fascinating account of important, but quite everyday details.
Since the author is an architect, he includes not only a glossary and a bibliography, but also a separate architectural chronology that matches Ise with other buildings. For example, the 12th renewal at Ise was just three years after the erection of the campanile of S. Marco in Venice.
He is also led to find in contemporary Japanese architecture continuations of Ise influence. Some of this is apparent and earned -- old Ise surfacing in new Tange.
Some seems excessive. To find Kiyonori Kikutake's Star-Wars-animal-like Edo-Tokyo Museum redolent of Ise simply because it is on stilts is plainly a stretch. And to discover the influence of Ise's modest gable decorations in Philipe Starck's immodest excretion atop the Asakusa Asahi Beer Hall is too much. This is the enormous and useless blob that the French architect calls the "flamme d'or" and that local residents called "the golden turd."
In all, however, this book is a true achievement and fine addition to the thoughtful library. It may be obtained from: Aristo, Birkebakken 9, DK 2840, Holte, Denmark. Send 6,000 yen plus postage. For information contact the author at tel/fax (45) 35-439-954 or e-mail [email protected]. The book will soon be available through Amazon.com.
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