Hotoke-ga-ura-32

🔘 π pics - all photos and collages Ⓒ Peter Callas

 

All photos taken with Sony Alpha A7R MkII & iPhone 6+.

 

Map: drive.google.com/open?id=1zN9FlfdEDKeulOvGcZ8iG-OBzHU&amp...

 

(Man seeing) nature imitating man imitating nature

 

Hotoke-ga-ura (仏ヶ浦), literally means “Buddha’s Cove”. These evocative formations, along a 1.5 km stretch of coast, are a nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty and Natural Monument, and are located within the borders of the Shimokita Hanto Quasi-National Park.

 

Many rocks here have been named after different manifestations of Buddha or his attributes - for example the rock in “Hotoke-ga-ura-31” and “Hotoke-ga-ura-32” is a “lotus”. The serendipitous placement of groups of rocks makes them reminiscent of Japanese raked rock gardens (“karesansui”, as at Ryoan-ji and Nanzenji Hojo in Kyoto). The twist is that karesansui are made by man understanding and imitating nature. The accidental karesansui at Hotoke-ga-ura are therefore (man seeing) nature imitating man imitating nature.

 

Originally I thought this place would be akin to Port Lligat in northern Catalonia, whose jagged rock formations provided the original phantom objects of Salvador Dali’s paranoid-critical technique in which he fixated on the ability of the brain to see links between things which are not rationally related. In the case of these remote rocks on the Shimokita Peninsula at the very north of Honshu, many people happily see Buddhas, not brain storms. But this is perhaps an overly occidental perception. I’m told that the rock in “Hotoke-ga-ura-07a” is not, according to the running commentary in Japanese on the boat en route, in fact seen as a buddha’s head with a hat on, as I, indeed, had initially seen it. One friend has pointed to the triad of rocks in the center of “Hotoke-ga-ura-35a” as a “serendipitous example of the classic buddha and two attendants arrangement”. Therein lies a subtle difference. The oriental version is more abstract, but at the same time more prescribed.

 

To reach here we needed to catch two boats. The first was from Aomori city to Ushitaki (“Cow Waterfall” - don’t ask, no one knows why) via Kawauchimachi. A second, much smaller vessel took us to the buddhas from Ushitaki. One couple on the boat commented that they had tried to come the previous day by car but could not reach the water from the cliffs above because they are so high and there is no track down.

 

Shimokita peninsula was for many Japanese in Edo times (17th-19th centuries) seen as the end of the world. It was indeed the end of Honshu island and far away from Japan’s Asian cultural attachments. Beyond Shimokita lay Hokkaido, untamed and occupied by “wild men” such as the Ainu tribes, who had been ruthlessly subjugated in mainland Japan. Coming to this remote place must have seemed like a pilgrimage and enduring the passage surely endorsed arrival there with the reward of realizing significance and meaning in the landscape.

Done