Rajōmon
Rajōmon ( Japanese 羅 城門 , also: Raseimon , dt. "Fortress Gate") was the gate that is located at the southern end of the main street Suzaku-ōji of the old, Chinese-style capitals of Japan Heijō-kyō ( Nara ) and Heian-kyō ( Kyōto ). The suzakumon was located at the northern end as a portal to the imperial palace . For the capital Fujiwara-kyō ( Kashihara ) the corresponding Rajōmon has not yet been discovered in contrast to the Suzakumon.
pronunciation
Rajōmon and Raseimon are on-readings of the characters: Rajōmon is the older Go-on ( Wu sound) from the 5th / 6th centuries. Century and Raseimon the later canon ( Han lute).
The Noh -Dramatiker Kanze Nobumitsu († 1516) used the spelling 羅生門 in which the sign of the castle is replaced by the after life, which also is , but also shō is spoken, and led the reading Rashōmon one. This is the usual spelling and reading in Japan today.
Rajōmon from Heian-kyō
history
During the Heian period, a large part of what was then Kyoto was developed as a city fortress. Rajō denotes the outermost fortification ring , with "Rajōmon" ( 34 ° 58 ′ 45.7 ″ N , 135 ° 44 ′ 33.4 ″ E ) marking the main entrance to the fortified urban area. The gate was built in 789 and was enormous for the time with 32 m wide, 9 m deep and 21 m high. Four kilometers north at the other end of the main road was the Suzakumon, with the same appearance and dimensions. The gate stood on a strongly fortified stone foundation , the roof was provided with a ridge beam .
Since the depth was too tight in contrast to the height and width, it collapsed on September 11, 816 (traditionally: Kōnin 7/8/16) due to the action of the wind, but was then rebuilt. On September 20, 980 (traditionally: Tengen 3/7/9) it collapsed again, but this time it was not rebuilt. The gate had already lost its importance as a representative building a few decades before, when, with the fall of the Korean kingdoms of Balhae and Silla , their embassies also ceased to exist.
Fujiwara no Michinaga used stones from the gate to build the Buddhist temple Hōjō-ji in 1023 .
In Japanese literature
In Japanese literature, the gate stands for a place where shady characters and criminals hide or stay or where corpses and unwanted babies are deposited and is thus a symbol of moral decay in times of need and an eschatological mood that prevailed at the end of the Heian period should have. The symbolic meaning was taken up again and again in the literature. According to popular legend, the gate is said to have been inhabited by an oni named Ibaraki Dōji ( 茨 木 童子 ) who kidnaps the most beautiful girls and does bad things to them in the towers of the gate. The hero Minamoto no Yorimitsu (944-1021) is said to have ended the hustle and bustle and brought the monster's head to the emperor.
In the Nō piece Rashōmon , however, Yoritome is a marginal figure (wakizure). He asks Fujiwara no Yasumasu to tell the story of Watanabe no Tsuna (waki I), who drives the devil (shite) out of the rashōmon.
The short story Rashōmon 羅 生 門 (1915) by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke describes how a man who was chased away by his master after years of service and who is now left with nothing in the city of Kyoto, which has been ravaged by earthquakes, hurricanes, conflagrations and famines in the evening below dilapidated Rashomon waiting for the rain to end. On the upper floor of the gate he watches an old woman pulling hair out of the corpses lying around there. When confronted, she claims that she makes wigs out of them so as not to starve. The man who had just made up his mind to starve to death rather than become a robber changes his mind. He explains to the old woman that she will certainly not blame him for robbing her now because otherwise he would have to starve to death, rips the kimono off her body and disappears into the night with it.
Rashomon became world-famous through Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film of the same name , in which the gate is the setting for the framework story, which has little to do with Akutagawa's narrative. Embedded in this framework is the film adaptation of Akutagawa's story Yabu no Naka 薮 の Im (1922; In the Thicket ), about a crime about which those questioned as perpetrators, victims or eyewitnesses in court report in contradicting yet plausible ways, and thus fundamentally questioning the possibility of finding out the truth. The term Rashomon effect , which is used now and then, does not seem very happy.
Rajōmon today
There are no remains of the gate today, even the foundation has been removed down to the last stone. The city has been rebuilt several times since then and the streets are also different. At the place where the gate used to stand there is now a memorial stone. A wooden plaque in Japanese and English explains the historical and literary significance of the place, which is today on Kujō Street, to the west of National Road 1, near the Tō-ji Temple . Today there is a children's playground on the floor plan of the gate. A nearby bus stop is named Rajōmon.
The reconstruction of the gate is currently not planned. It is considered extremely difficult or even impossible because there are no authentic references to the architecture of the gate.
Rajōmon in Heijō-kyō
The Rajōmon of Nara stood 4 km south of the Suzakumon. The two stone foundations were found between 1969 and 1972. Based on these stone foundations, the gate was 41.5 m wide.
Some of the foundation stones were used by Toyotomi Hidenaga in the 16th century when expanding his castle in Kōriyama .
Remarks
- ↑ a b Conversion of the traditional Japanese lunar calendar date with NengoCalc according to Reinhard Zöllner : Japanese time calculation . Iudicium Verlag, Munich 2003
swell
- ↑ a b c City of Kyōto: History of the Rajōmon (Japanese).
- ↑ Akira Kurosawa: Something Like an Autobiography . Translated from Japanese into English by Audie E. Bock. Vintage Books 1982. Excerpts from criterion.com
- ↑ http://www.kabuki21.com/ibaraki.php
- ^ Hermann Bohner : The individual Nō . German Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia. 1956. pp. 601-603.
- ↑ 奈良 歴 史 漫 歩 No.025 平城 京 羅 城門 と 来世 墓 の 鳥 居. In: ブ ッ ク ハ ウ ス. Retrieved April 10, 2007 (Japanese).
