Many of our Chinese when they travel to Japan, most of them are just walking around, and most of the places they go to are in the bustling cities of Tokyo and Hokkaido, while shonan, Japan, is something that few people will go to deliberately. In the eyes of many people who know a little about Japan's geography, Shonan, Japan is a continuous sea and plenty of sunshine, but here is also pregnant with an ancient cultural capital - Kamakura, Kamakura in addition to its former "Kamakura shogunate" as the base of japan, its location by the mountains and rivers, since ancient times has also been a place of cultivation. Many literati and travelers came together to give Kamakura, a town near the mountains and the sea, a unique atmosphere that was both beautiful and melancholy.
Reason to go to Kamakura
The Tokyo March, written in 1929, goes like this: "In the vast part of Tokyo, it is too small to fall in love... Watch a movie or have afternoon tea? Simply take the Odakyu to escape the hustle and bustle, the ever-changing Shinjuku, Musashino Moon, and the beautiful Asakusa on the high-hanging department store..."
In the vast area of Tokyo, it is too small to talk about love. If you want to get away from busy Tokyo, follow the lyrics of the song "Tokyo March" and take the Odakyu train to choose a suburb to go, and feel the showa romance in the song. When it comes to the outskirts of Tokyo, many people choose to travel to Kamakura because of its convenient transportation and the special charm of Kamakura.
As in the Japanese movie "Kamakura Story", the protagonist Ichisei Masakazu said at the beginning: "The way Kamakura time flows is different from other places." "The Tale of Kamakura" is adapted from the original work of Japanese manga artist Ryohei Nishigan, and the content is based on the charming style of Kamakura in reality, constructing a fantasy worldview where "people and monsters" coexist. This kind of creative background may come from The special history and geography of Kamakura, or the unique ancient capital sentiment and poetic pace of Kamakura.
Kamakura City, located in Kanagawa Prefecture, was once the seat of the samurai regime of the "Kamakura Shogunate" of Japan, which ruled for nearly 150 years (1192-1333 AD). The famous Takatoku-in Temple", "Kamakura Giant Buddha" (1252 in the western year), "Tsuruoka Hachimangu" (1180 AD) were built at this time, showing Kamakura's rich cultural and historical background. Kamakura is geographically close to the mountains and the sea (one side facing the sea, three sides holding the mountain), perhaps the spiritual gift of the mountain and the sea, so Kamakura has given birth to many literary, film, and artistic works.
Kamakura's subtle and beautiful Showa atmosphere often appears in Japanese films, such as Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu's films "Mai Qiu" and "Late Spring", or Japanese writers of the twentieth century such as Yukio Mishima, Osamu Dazai, and Yasunari Kawabata who often stop here to think, walk and create. The cascading Kamakura romance was thus planted and continually endowed.
Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima, known as one of the three great masters of Japanese post-war literature, composed his last masterpiece, "The Sea of Plenty", before he was forty-five years old, composed of "Spring Snow", "Running Horse", "Xiaoji Temple" and "Five Declines of Tenjin", which are four-part Okawa novels.
"The Sea of Plenty" is often considered to be the book of the cause of death of Mishima, the four classics by a fictional character "Honda Fukubun" as the co-protagonist, written sequentially from Honda's youth to old age, through japan after the Russo-Japanese War, the core revolves around Honda's lifelong theory of reincarnation and the ultimate self-dismantling of the philosophy of knowledge, which can be described as the result of Mishima's hard work.
"Spring Snow" and kamakura Literature Museum
Mishima, contrary to the Western model of novel writing at the time, created four other Mishima novel-like characters in the quadrilogy, in addition to the protagonists of novels like Honda, who were gorgeous and beautiful. The character in "Spring Snow"—Kiyoshi Matsueda—is such a young man who is too beautiful to die. The scene in the novel where Kiyohito and Satoko meet for the first time is on a spring day when snowflakes are fluttering. The poignant love between the two later became more and more mournful and beautiful according to the pen of Yukio Mishima.
Kiyoshi Matsueda was born in the family of the Marquis of Matsueda before the Russo-Japanese War, and often talks about the relationship between "Spring Snow" and the Kamakura Literature Museum, which is the prototype building of the latter as the novel, the Marquis matsue family annex" of "Final South Farewell". The Kamakura Literature Museum was originally a Western-style villa by Marquis Toshiji Maeda, but was donated to Kamakura City in 1983 as a museum of literature. The museum houses manuscripts by writers such as Yasunari Kawabata, Daibuchiro Ōbuchi, and Ryunosuke Wasagawa, and is a literary scene for visiting Kamakura.
Compared with the beauty of Yukio Mishima and Kamakura, the relationship between the writer Osamu Dazai and Kamakura should be painful and sad. In 1930, Osamu Dazai and a waitress whom he met at a coffee shop were martyred by jumping into the sea at Cape Komomi in Kamakura, and the waitress was killed, but Osamu Dazai was rescued by a fisherman and later expelled from the Tsushima family. Accordingly, Osamu Dazai wrote the work "Flower of the Clown". What the protagonist of the novel, Ōtoya Yezo, experiences may be seen as a monologue by Osamu Dazai at this time consisting of self-deprecation and the sorrow of life.
Dazai is not the only one who jumped into this sea, although the purpose is different, the Japanese writer Natsume Soseki also jumped into the sea in Shonan. Around 1894, Natsume Soseki fell ill with tuberculosis, and because two of his brothers in the family died of lung disease, he was trapped by the illness during his trip to Shonan, and it seemed that he jumped into the tide in order to relieve the bitterness of the disease or the unsuccessful attempt to create a creative ideal. When Natsume felt happy because he was not in the middle of the waves, he was anxious to see the innkeeper and hurried to ask him to go ashore.
Natsume Soseki also visited Kamakura in order to seek the solution to the suffering of the soul, although it did not succeed a month later, but this zen experience appeared in Natsume's novel "The Door"—the protagonist of the novel, Sosuke, went to Kamakura to participate in Zen in order to pursue the epiphany of the Zen poem "The wind blows and the clouds fall, and the moon is on the east mountain jade". Kamakura Yuanjue-ji Temple has a haiku stele of Natsume Soseki, which indicates that the author Natsume Soseki once attended meditation at The Guiyuan Temple.
There are many ancient temples in Kamakura, and the scenery in the temple is often accompanied by bright or elegant flowers, such as the Kamakura Mingyue Temple, which is also known as the "Hydrangea Temple", or the famous "Hydrangea Walkway" of Kamakura HaseJi Temple. Also known as hydrangeas, hydrangeas bloom in summer and bloom during the rainy season in Japan. After days of drizzle, the hydrangea flowers bloom more in the water vapor. Kamakura in June often attracts many tourists because of its purple romance.
The hydrangea ginseng of the Mingyue Temple, planted with the royal blue variety "Hime" Ziyang, the pure color of the blue, also has the title of "Mingyueyuan": the blue of the Mingyueyuan. In addition to flower viewing, many people come for a "Hanami Jizo" holding a hydrangea flower, and the decorations on the hanami jizo body change with the seasons. If Jizo holds different flowers, the decorations worn are also different, which is very cute.
In addition to the Mingyue Temple, there are also hydrangeas with various colors on the "Sanze Road" next to the Kannon Hall of Haseji Temple, which is also a very popular place to enjoy flowers. If you want to get away from the crowds, kamakura's four seasons also have other elegant flower viewing spots, such as the "Genpei Pond" of Tsuruoka Hachimangu Shrine with red and white lotus flowers in summer, the elegant daffodils of Seosen-ji Temple in January, and the sanatorium full of gorgeous azaleas in May.
From Yukio Mishima to Natsume Soseki, perhaps someone will continue to come to Kamakura later, changing people and time, and what remains unchanged is the unique style of Kamakura. If you have time in the future, you may wish to take a trip to Kamakura culture, if you go according to the flowering period, it may be a more poetic and interesting choice.