Japan is an understated kinda place. No kidding. The food is an amalgam of subtlety, the arts a collection of underplayed gestures and hints, the language a series of silences and abbreviations through which a landscape of complexity is barely, but seriously, hinted at.
So rarely do the Japanese state anything outright that, I have to suppose, they deem it necessary to make the most of the opportunity when it arises. In this sense and in many many others, Japan is a nation of outrageous contrast. For every spartan hint of emotion in conversation, there exists an excessively wailing love song, for every conservative refusal to to hold hands in public, a depraved sexual act occurs behind closed (paper) doors, for every village temple, with an unvarnished wooden shrine to an unremarkable stump of tree… there’s Fushimi Inari Taisha.
Fushimi Inari Taisha, Summer 08
