The Artful Engineer

Kamakura is a pretty city in Kanagawa prefecture south of Tokyo. It has some notable temples, including Hasedera and Kotoku-in. All but one of the images in this post were taken on the grounds of the former. The original Hasedera temple dates back to the 8th century, although the building above has been rebuilt more than once, including after a massive 1923 earthquake; this most recent effort took over 50 years.

All the images in this post are relatively tight details. It’s nice to have a wider view or two to establish the context for those details, but I just didn’t end up with any. I will blame this on the combination of bright overcast sky and the sparsity of tourist-free broader scenes. In truth, Hasedera, at least, was far from being overrun with tourists and it usually isn’t difficult to edit out a few of them, so I think the primary reason was the sky. Regardless, I have a lot of images I am happy with, it’s just that they are just all about the details.

Traditional Japanese architecture—particularly evident in temples, shrines, and castles—features lots of curved rooflines. The image above packs a bunch of these into one tight square composition. The gold details stand out against the dark brown paint, largely because they are well-lit by the aforementioned bright white sky.

The soft light from the overcast sky is also the perfect low-contrast lighting for lush vegetation like that around this stone marker. There is some competition here for which element is going to be the primary subject—the upright stone or the bundles of grasses by its base—but I think the stone wins this one because of its prominence in the frame, its color contrast with the surroundings, and the carvings. There is a certain mystery to the stone because it is old and streaked and moss-covered. The plant also partially obscures some of the writing. But I admit that this sense of mystery may have as much to do with the fact that I cannot read Japanese.

This veritable legion of statuettes also possesses its share of mystery. Since they extend to all the way to the borders of the frame, the implication is that they extend a great distance beyond what is shown, something that was indeed the case.

This next image is a hard switch in terms of color palette. Rather than show the entire torii gate, in this instance I just showed part of it. The result is an unusual asymmetric composition, it seems, at least for a torii gate. According to Google, the white kanji on the left means “spring” (as in the season of spring); regardless of its meaning, it provides a compositional focus for the image, something that is aided by the somewhat puzzling lumps surrounding it. Beyond it hang shells (oyster shells?) upon which people have, I believe, written wishes and prayers.

The little wooden plaques below, called ema, are similarly waiting for people to write on the back side and then hang them on different racks. There were untold thousands of these.

Photographing a bamboo forest was one of my bucket list items in Japan, but I never got to a proper one. I still enjoyed the more modest collections of bamboo that I did encounter. I find this image to be very peaceful with its muted greens and soft light on the smooth stone floor in the background. I think the overall arrangement of stalks (called culms) is pleasing, as well.

This next image is from Kotoku-in, a temple most famous for its massive Buddha statue. I took a few images of that, but none made the cut to share in this post. But this support structure for a weathered, twisted tree, complete with interesting ropework, made a nice composition. I saw a number of similar tree supports in Japan, which must be a traditional solution.

A also made a number of images of this koi pond. The lone pink flower on the vibrant green lily-pads is great raw material, but the passing koi are what makes it special. This arrangement of fish seems almost ideal, with the bright orange one well-positioned and the subtler pale ones just showing their tails.

I wanted to slip in some greenery this week before heading back to Tokyo for some very urban—and very fun—images. I’m really looking forward to sharing them next week.

Thank you for visiting!