Tour o' Toros

Since I posted last week about the symbolism of the Japanese toro - the traditional lantern that stands at the entry ways of shrines and temples throughout the country, I became a little bit of a connoisseur, if you will, of the form.  So I would like to borrow that imagery for the introduction of the next few posts:  there are five topics left to cover from my trip to Japan; I will complete them this week.  Most of the photos here were taken on my Saturday sightseeing day at a couple of sites in Kamakura.

The original post about the toro is here:     http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2011/01/toro-intro-to-buddhist-cosmology.html - I found some interesting research that outlined how each part of the lantern symbolized an element of Buddhist cosmology.  Once I had learned this, I carefully looked at each one I encountered to see the connections.  In the end, what really happened was that I developed an appreciation for each of them as individuals - their locations, their forms - and that is what I hope to show a little bit of in this post.

The first photo above is probably my favorite of the ones I saw on Saturday, as I toured the Hase-dera Temple, the Daibutsu, and Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu, the three sites where these images come from.  The first toro was in a little bamboo stand next to the sutra library.  At Hase-dera there was a stone footpath that you could follow into the bamboo, starting near the lantern.

The second, also a favorite, is this smaller toro surrounded by boxwood and also in the gardens at Hase-dera.  The boxwood is really prospering around it, almost enough to take it over.

I have some great images of the Buddha statue - the Daibutsu - that I will post this week, but for now, here is a photo of the toro that stands at the entry to that shrine.   Farther back at this site there is another, smaller one, shown in the fourth photo.  It stands next to a small shrine, and on the day I visited, a vase with roses filled the little firebox. 

The fifth toro is one I saw at the Hachiman-gu, again off on the grounds near a small shrine.  I did not get close enough to that shrine to determine what it was for, since there were two visitors near the front paying their respects.  I encountered this - prayers and worship - at a couple of the sites throughout the day. 

The final one is one of a pair that were on the main level at the Hase-dera.  I assume they marked the entry to the Kannon-do Hall, where a 30-foot tall statue of a Bodhisattva stands.  That hall and the gardens on these grounds were the point of my visit there, my first stop in Kamakura and the topic of my post tomorrow.