Excusemimasen, have you seen my wabi-sabi?: 05/29/10

Last Friday I made my third trip to the Kobosan market at Toji. At this point, I recognize some of the regular vendors and where they usually set up shop, but I've yet to make a full sweep of the entire market it one visit. This time I came in through the south entrance, rather than the north, and passed by some vendors whose items I'd never had a chance to scrutinize before.

In particular, I stopped to have a look at the traditional Japanese flute vendor. I'd always wanted a bamboo flute, and, coming from a family of musicians, it's something my parents and grandparents back home would enjoy as well. I spoke with the young woman selling the instruments in Japanese, and successfully asked her some questions about the differences between shakuhachi and shinobue, in which keys they were traditionally played, etc.

While the shakuhachi is an end-blown flute (and probably better known), the shinobue is a transverse flute, usually higher-pitched, but also made from bamboo. The shinobue is often found in traditional Japanese folk and Kabuki music. Although I think I still prefer the timbre of shakuhachi, since they were on the expensive side I went for a 2,000 yen shinobue. It came with a handy primer: explanations of how the shinobue's history, theories behind how to play one, explanations of scales and fingering are written in both Japanese and passable English. The back of the primer also contains several folk songs, mostly Japanese, and a couple of English and Scottish folk tunes.

a kimono stall

This guy makes little bead animals and characters

Looking around I saw some of the same ol', same ol', and a couple of new things. The most, er, interesting item I came across was a beautiful antique wooden box with phoenix motifs carved onto the lid. Inside the box on the bottom was a shunga design (probably Ukiyo-e), that is, an antique, explicitly erotic design. Surprise in a box.

Yep. I shouldn't be surprised. Another stall had a pile of small metal figurines, many of which were of various Buddhist deities, but mixed in with the lot were some of women or animals hugging a disproportionately large phallus.

There's actually a festival in Japan, called Kanamura Matsuri, or Festival of the Steel Phallus. I don't really need to explain what the motif of that festival is...But the reason for the veneration of the steel phallus is that it was supposedly used to break the teeth of a vagina dentata demon, basically.

There's also Hounen Matsuri, a fertility festival with similar themes...

Moving on!

Since I'd come a bit late in the afternoon, maybe an hour after I'd arrived, some of the vendors were already starting to pack up their wares and drive out of the parking lots. One thing which caught my eye (and eventually my wallet) was a smallish clay pot. There's kind of a toothed bristle in the middle of it where you stick flowers, and you fill water up around it in a little pool. What got me was the little reed mat and miniature ladle, like the ones people use to clean their hands at shrines and temples. It was too adorable. What is it exactly about objects made for teeny Borrower-sized people that makes them so irresistible?

I think the lady actually gave me the mini reed mat and ladle with the pot for free, I suppose in exchange for the amusing experience of attempting to cross language barriers. (A nice man passing by who knew some English actually helped us both out, but it we were still kind of stumbling hilariously through the interaction.)