Chamberlain Japanese Collection and Ginkaku-ji

When I went to Japan in early November and stayed in Kyoto for a few days, I visited a few temples including Ginkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion). It is designated as a national treasure of Japan, and is very popular among both Japanese and foreign tourists.

Ginkaku-ji with 'Kogetsudai' (Moon viewing platform) in the centre © Fusa McLynn

One of the reasons why I wanted to visit Ginkaku-ji was, in fact, the Chamberlain collection. The collection includes numerous maps and plans of holy places as well as amulets from Japan. One of the maps shows Ginkaku-ji with its garden including 'Kogetsudai' (Moon viewing platform) clearly marked. My English friend once called it a Christmas pudding. You can see why if you look at the photo above.

Map of Ginkaku-ji in the Pitt Rivers Museum Chamberlain collection PRM 1908.82.465 © Pitt Rivers Museum

At the top margin of the map, there is a poem with the name of the poet. The name reads as 'Jishoin dono Yoshimasa ko'. This is the 8th Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436 - 1490), who was the founder of Ginkaku-ji.

The place did not originally start as a temple but was actually designed as an elegant villa for Yoshimasa. He was a very cultured man but tragically weak. He failed to take strong political leadership and so became responsible for the outbreak of a civil war, which lasted 10 years and ruined Kyoto completely. Having had enough with politics, he retired, abandoned his official residence, and made his son the next shogun, allowing his wife Hino Tomiko to become extremely powerful. (She is one of very few women who came to power in Japanese history). Then he started to build this villa in 1482. Rather sadly he never saw its completion. Although he was a disastrous ruler, he played an important role to develop Japanese traditional arts such as flower arrangement and tea ceremony. He was also talented in garden designing. After his death, the place became a Zen temple of the Rinzai sect. Thus it is now called Ginkaku-ji (ji means temple in Japanese). But it is a sort of nickname and the formal name is 'Jisho-ji', which takes after Yoshimasa's posthumous name.

When I opened the information leaflet given at the temple, the first thing I saw was a familiar map of the place! It is not totally identical to the one at the Pitt Rivers but it is very similar.

The cover and map page of the information leaflet © Fusa McLynn

Thinking about the troubled and miserable shogun who left such a beautiful legacy, and B.H. Chamberlain who was so well versed in Japanese art and literature, I enjoyed walking in the garden under the warm autumn sun.

The garden at Ginkaku-ji © Fusa McLynn

Fusa McLynn
Collections Volunteer

Japanese Amulets: Uncovering the mystery of what is inside?

A contemporary shrine souvenir shop, Japan © Fusa McLynn

O-mamori and o-fuda (Japanese amulets) are quite popular even today. The majority of contemporary Japanese no longer follow religious practices, all the same, they still like to buy amulets for themselves, or for family and friends, when they visit temples and shrines. 

In such souvenir shops, they sell amulets which are not very different from those which B. H. Chamberlain collected in Japan and sent to the Pitt Rivers Museum about 100 years ago.

Amulet envelope containing a Sanskrit letter and image
of Kannon PRM 1908.82.309 © Pitt Rivers Museum

When I was a small child I was very curious about what were inside, although I knew to open the amulets to have a look was a taboo. 

Children were made to believe that something awful would happen if they did such a thing. But some bolder friends of mine ignored the warning. They told me that there was only a strip of paper with a phrase of a Buddhism sutra (and nothing bad happened to them after all).

Since I started to work on the Japanese texts written on the amulets in the Pitt Rivers Museum, I have seen many different things inside them. They are not only thin strips of paper with a bit of sutra as my childhood friends discovered. Quite a wide variety can be seen. Some bear the names of gods or their images, and others have the Sanskrit symbols representing the different aspects of Buddha.

More unusual ones contain leaves, grains of rice, fake gold coins, or small pills. 

PRM 1908.82.306 and PRM 1908.82.307
© Pitt Rivers Museum

For example, on the left you can see an amulet for those seeking a happy marriage, which is from Yaegaki Jinja (shrine) in Shimane prefecture and contains something which looks like a leaf. It is, in fact, a camellia leaf. Why? 

According to a legend, Princess Kushinada, the wife of Susano (brother of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess), planted two camellia trees. These two grew into one, and became a symbol of eternal love. Even now there are three intertwined camellia trees in the shrine precinct. 

LafcadioHearn (1850-1904), who was a good friend of Chamberlain (although they would fall out later), possibly got this very amulet for him to send to the museum. Hearn lived in Shimane, and wrote about Yaegaki shrine in his book, “Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan”. Besides the camellia amulet, some of the other items he mentions in this book can be identified in the Chamberlain Collection. Follow this link to read the relevant section of his book about the camellia amulet.  

Fusa McLynn

Collections Volunteer