#nikko — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Professor MsPaint @[email protected] · 2026-05-14 · 05:02 UTC

#Charmera #toycamera #Japan #Photo #Foto #streetphotography #kodak #Nikko #gits #ghostintheshell

#charmera #toycamera #japan #photo #foto #streetphotography

Steve McCarty 🇯🇵 @[email protected] · 2026-04-28 · 00:32 UTC

A little beyond Nikkō in Tochigi Prefecture is the Lake Chūzenji (中禅寺湖) area with white birch trees and snow on the nearby peaks, although it was warm at 1,500 meters. In my 45 or so years here, I had only gone a little north of Tōkyō to Tsukuba to teach a graduate school class.

There were quite a few monkeys around, though I'm not sure which one saw no evil. There were signs in Japanese about bears, usually docile to humans, but not always. We didn't see any on lonely paths with few tourists. Frankly, you need wheels to see much of these great sights, although I saw Western guys waiting for buses, which run infrequently in the countryside of Japan. Also interesting was an onsen (hot springs) village in the mountains, with a mild sulfur smell and colors welling up, and hot water puddles.

Open access publications on Japan: https://japanned.hcommons.org/japanology

#Japan #nature #mountains #Nikko #Chuzenji #Tochigi #Buddhism #Buddhist #temple #sightseeing #travel #photography #photos

#japan #nature #mountains #nikko #chuzenji #tochigi

Steve McCarty 🇯🇵 @[email protected] · 2026-04-25 · 02:14 UTC

Many responses to my post with photos of the Shintō-Buddhist hybrid shrine Nikkō Tōshō-gū (日光東照宮) dedicated to the first Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu at permalink https://hcommons.social/@SteveMcCarty/116460012855652237 included a question from @gclef
> Interesting, thanks for sharing that! Noted the three monkeys motif... is there a Japanese story/parable about them? Familiar with the western version, just wondering about cultural variations.

The three monkeys originated in the 17th Century with a Japanese pun based on an ancient Confucian saying, and the photo I showed was its most prominent illustration. It entered the West in the 19th Century and took on more of a cynical meaning than the austere Asian version, although Japanese has a common expression for pretending not to see something dicey.

Here are more photos of the exceptionally ornate Nikkō Tōshō-gū.

Publications as a Professor in Japan: https://japanned.hcommons.org

#Nikko #Toshogu #Buddhism #Shinto #shrine #Japan #travel #architecture #photography #photos

#nikko #toshogu #buddhism #shinto #shrine #japan

Steve McCarty 🇯🇵 @[email protected] · 2026-04-25 · 02:14 UTC

Many responses to my post with photos of the Shintō-Buddhist hybrid shrine Nikkō Tōshō-gū (日光東照宮) dedicated to the first Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu at permalink https://hcommons.social/@SteveMcCarty/116460012855652237 included a question from @gclef
> Interesting, thanks for sharing that! Noted the three monkeys motif... is there a Japanese story/parable about them? Familiar with the western version, just wondering about cultural variations.

The three monkeys originated in the 17th Century with a Japanese pun based on an ancient Confucian saying, and the photo I showed was its most prominent illustration. It entered the West in the 19th Century and took on more of a cynical meaning than the austere Asian version, although Japanese has a common expression for pretending not to see something dicey.

Here are more photos of the exceptionally ornate Nikkō Tōshō-gū.

Publications as a Professor in Japan: https://japanned.hcommons.org

#Nikko #Toshogu #Buddhism #Shinto #shrine #Japan #travel #architecture #photography #photos

#nikko #toshogu #buddhism #shinto #shrine #japan

Steve McCarty 🇯🇵 @[email protected] · 2026-04-24 · 13:52 UTC

Returned home to Ōsaka from the best ever trip to the Tōkyō region, staying with our sons, meeting friends, and going to beautiful places. Let's start with Nikkō Tōshō-gū (日光東照宮), a shrine dedicated to the first Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu who united Japanese civilization four centuries ago. It's unusually gorgeous and ornate by traditional Japanese aesthetic standards, reflecting warlord grandiosity, but it still blends nicely with the mountain woods. The first photo shows what I noticed first as a researcher, the syncretism of Buddhism with indigenous Shintō. One especially famous feature is the three monkeys who bespeak 'see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.' That last one is a trouble spot when you speak two languages 😆.

#Nikko #Toshogu #Buddhism #Buddhist #temple #Shinto #shrine #Japan #nature #culture #sightseeing #travel #architecture #woodcarving #photography #photos