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Here are several pair of asagutsu shoes (浅靴), nicely lined up, worn by Shinto priests. I took the picture during the Yoi-yoiYama matsuri at the Yasaka shrine. A sagutsu, are kind of shoe worn by nobles in ancient times, and by Shinto priests during the performance of certain religious ceremonies today. Asagutsu, have been made of hollowed paulownia wood finished in black lacquer since the Heian period (794 to 1185 A.D).

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Buddhist Tabernacle

Heian period

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I’ve been reading through this book for the past week or so. Mostly as research for a story I am writing. The book is about marriage practices among the different social classes and how they changed through the years of the Heian era and some things just blow my mind.

Just prior and through the...

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Things that make the heart lurch with anxiety — Watching a horse-race. Twisting up a paper hair-binding cord. When a parent looks out of sorts, and remarks they’re not feeling well. This particularly worries you to distraction when you’ve been hearing panicky tales of plague sweeping the land. Also, a little child who can’t yet talk, who simply cries and cries, refusing to drink from the breast or even to be comforted when the nurse picks it up and holds it. Your heart naturally lurches when you hear the voice of your secret lover in an unexpected place, but the same thing happens when you hear someone else talking about him. It also lurches when someone you really detest arrives for a visit. Indeed the heart is a creature amazingly prone to lurching. It even lurches in sympathy with another woman when the next-morning letter from a man who stayed with her for the first time the night before is late in arriving.

Sei Shonagon in The Pillow Book (via brown-eggs)

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"KYOTO—Even in ancient times, marital relations could be rocky, according to an ancient earthenware dish bearing a set of kanji characters found in the remains of a high-class nobleman’s house in Heiankyo (present-day Kyoto), the capital of the Heian Period (794-1185)."

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Please do not remove the credits.

Saioh / 斎王様 l Jake Jung

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Japanese ancient 12 layers kimono, Juni-hitoe 十二単, at Nagashi Bina: Girls’ Day Festival in Kyoto

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Kwaidan - The Black Hair, 1964, dir. Masaki Kobayashi

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Statue of lady #Murasaki in the garden of #IshiyamaDera in #Otsu! She wrote the #TaleOfGenji here!

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Japanese Lady of the Court from the Heian Era - Imgur

Heian Era festival

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxPXF8VV12Y

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Recreating Heian look on stage.  Japan.  The Heian period was a Japanese period dating back about 1000 years  

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mainichi.jp

There has never been a version of “Genji Monogatari” (The Tale of Genji) that is so easy to understand. Written by Nozomu Hayashi and released by Shodensha Co., this version of the work is as easy to …

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Another view of the doll I posted yesterday. She is playing kai awase, a seashell matching game that was popular among the Heian nobility.

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Proofread of the Month: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

The first work to be transcribed this month, Marriage as a Trade (1909) by Cicely Hamilton, has already been completed.  You can read it in full on Wikisource.

Following the Female Author Month theme of this August on Wikisource, the next work to be proofread is Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan (1920) translated by Annie Shepley Omori and Kōchi Doi.

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