Yokohama Nishi Ward

Description

Strolling through Nishi-ward: Grave-Watching



Maybe it is because of personality of Japanese people, or different religious values, graves of Japanese people are very serious and cookie-cutter ones. However, in cemetery of Mount K?ya, which has 1300 years history, I have seen very bold and bizarre graves.



A big airplane-shape grave belonged to a big man from an airline company. A round-shape grave belonged to a president of Pachinko machine manufacturer as I expected.



Anyway, this grave is located at the back of Rinkoji temple and in front of Karasu tea house. The grave belongs to Onojiro, who was second-born son of Denkichi Isikawa, who was Yoriki-to of Suruga Tokugawa Clan.



Onojiro was a famous Japanese lacquer artist and he made great achievements of reconstruction of Japanese lacquer which was ravaged by the war. It is very interesting to discover a life of various people from the end of their stories by visiting their graves, which I call “grave-watching”.



Writing and picture by Tai Hasewaga (Nishi ward Cultural Association/Chairman of Kiko Society)



※This is a sketch and writing published in Yokohama Public Relation Nishi ward edition between November 1997 and April 2004. Please be noted that there’s a possibility that information in the article may be changed.



(Published January in 2004)