Curiosities and Discoveries While Searching for the Eisho-in Temple

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 110 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Getting Started

amid some bare trees

Konkaikomyou-ji Temple (金戒光明寺), Kyoto Japan

The fall-foliage season is mostly over in Kyoto. During this season I re-discovered and explored some wonderful areas
within walking distance from my house.

It started when a friend suggested that I visit a temple nearby, sending a map link, so I headed off towards it.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Promising View

from where his map link pointed to

The map link brought me to one of the entrances to a big graveyard behind the Konkaikomyou-ji Temple, an area with a lot
of visual richness. I went in to explore.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/1000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Typical Modern Japanese Gravestone

dated 1972

Despite the English word “gravestone”, there are no bodies buried here, just little fragments of bone in a cavity under the
stone, as described in “Kotsuiri — Placing of the Bones”.

They're often beautiful and photogenic, especially the older ones.

But this was the fall-foliage season, so I was first drawn to some colorful leaves near the northern edge of the graveyard,
and I looked over the fence to see this:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/9, ISO 3200 —
map & image data — nearby photos
Desktop-Background Versions

1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600  ·  2880×1800

I couldn't see much, but the partially-visible roof made me guess that it was the back garden of a temple.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 110 —
map & image data — nearby photos
Vertical Desktop-Background Versions



1050×1680  ·  1200×1920  ·  1600×2560

Anyway, I continued to explore the paths in the graveyard, and at the end of one came to a larger affair:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Teshima Family Grave

dated “明治38” (1905)

The wabi-sabi is strong here. Its size suggests importance, and parts of it
are still in good shape, but other parts are leaning precariously, and there are few right angles left anymore. But the fact that it's
still here means, I think, that someone's still paying for its space on temple grounds.

Reading the information on these stones is an art, one of which I have only the most basic abilities.
Here's the side that has the date:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/3.5, ISO 900 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Across the top are two characters, 「松」meaning “pine” and 「淳」, which my dictionary says means “pure”.
I don't know whether these are headings for the dates that come underneath them, or whether they are a single
word (and if so, whether it's 「松淳」「淳松」), so I'm off to a bad start.

But, down the right side is clearly a date that reads 「明治三十八年八月十日歿」, which means
“Died Aug 10, Meiji 38”. The 38th year of the Meiji era is 1905.

The writing is somewhat stylized, as you can tell by comparing the font seen in the sentence above with that seen on the stone.
In particular, I'd not recognize the middle character as 「年」outside the context of an obvious date.

Down the left side is also clearly a date, though which date I'm not so sure. It looks to be 「昭和四年十月廾一日歿」,
which seems to me to mean “Died October 21st, Showa 4” (year 4 of the Showa era was 1929). But again,
the character that looks to be 「年」doesn't look quite right, so I might be missing something.

Across from this large grave was a more modern, and more colorful one that had clearly been tended to recently:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 900 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Very Modern

But, across from it next to the bigger one was an older one still:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 450 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Dating from 明治32 (1899)








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/2.2, ISO 900 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Dating from 明治25 (1892)

I started on a mission to see how old of a stone I could find. Soon I came across a date with
an era name I'd never seen:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/2.2, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Doesn't Look Particularly Old








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 720 —
map & image data — nearby photos

The Side with the Date

reading 「享保十九甲寅年」down the right,

and「九月十日」down the left

I had to look up the era name, 「享保」,
so pulled up Wikipedia's , and
was excited to find that the Kyoho era went from 1716 to 1736,
so this year-19 date equates to 1734. It's older than America.

The date was clear to me, but the two small characters 甲 and 寅 after the year number were a mystery. Later that evening,
Manseki-san told me it was from the Chinese sexagenary cycle, a
sixty-year cycle that seems to be in the same class as the 12-year cycle we sometimes hear spoken of with phrases like “year of
the horse”. Indeed, doing the calculations for 1734, we find it equates to year 51 of that cycle, which is denoted by those two
characters included on the stone.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 360 —
map & image data — nearby photos








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

明治16 (1883)

Looks older than it is, perhaps because it's not pure stone?

(is it a layer of cement that's flaking off?)








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 —
map & image data — nearby photos

明治19 and 20

(1886 and 1887)








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 —
map & image data — nearby photos

文政9

(1826)

The current era is in year 29, and the previous era ran for 63 years, so it's easy to forget that sometimes the eras lasted
just a few years (they last only as long as their emperor). In the past 150 years there have been only four eras, but in the 150
years prior to that there were 21. This part of Kyoto used to be on the fringe, and has been used for burial rituals for over a
thousand years, so with well over a hundred era names that might apply to things I find, I have to look up any but the most
recent. It can be a bit exciting as I scroll backwards in time and still don't find a match.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 250 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Lots of Questions

This seems to have a mini life story. From what I can tell, he was born on Sep 18th in
the year 文久2 (1862), joined families (by marriage, I assume), and died
on May 8 of 昭和17 (1942), which would put him just shy of his 80th birthday. But it seems
to say “81 years old” at one point. I'm probably just misunderstanding something, but
I wonder whether they simply lost track of the years. In counting from the birth year (文久2)
to the death year (昭和17) one has to know the details of six eras (文久 covered three years,
元治 just two, 慶応 covered 4, then 明治 and 大正 covered 43 and 15, respectively, and then they
were still in 昭和).

Now I suppose they have an app
for computing time spans across eras, but I can't imagine how they kept it straight back then.