A few days ago, on the way to a funeral service of our professor emeritus, I found a very tiny shrine near Kashii station, Fukuoka City. The shrine, named Hamao Shrine, only has a small shrine gate, Torii in Japanese, and a tiny cottage-like main body, which should harbor a god of this shrine. In the shrine garden, however, it has a nice pasania tree full of green leaves, providing a peaceful shade in the garden and looking as if this tree might be a real main body representing a god in this shrine.
Although small and equipped only with minimum elements of a shrine, Hamao Shrine is neatly decolated with holy white paper ribbons and maintained well, indicating that some Japanese spirits are still alive among the residents there.
While translating Basho's Genjuan no ki ( from English ofcourse ), I came to the word pasania tree . I am from Kerala, the southernmost state of India, where we have no pasania. My google search led me to your site with that picture of a shrine with a pasania tree at its side. It strangely reminds me of my land's numerous little shrines with banyan trees . Thank you. Can you send me a good picture of the tree?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. Unfortunately I have no more picture of the tree taken closer, but that's my neighbor, so I'll have another chance to take photo of the tree to send you.
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