Asia

[Visited: February 2024]

From nearby Nippori station a short walk brings you to the northern entrance of Yanaka Cemetery (or Yanaka Bochi as locals often call it, although the official name is Yanaka Reien). Before I start my exploration, I have a tasty lunch in a nearby restaurant. Then, I walk up a path to enter the cemetery. Before me, I see a straight lane lined with curved old trees, that are showing their age. On both sides, I see tombs in neat arrangement, as you would expect in Japan. The dominant colour is grey. On many graves, I see slender, wooden sticks sticking into the air. Kanji characters are engraved in them. These are sotoba, and the posthumous Buddhist name of the deceased. Tombs are family graves, and most graves therefore have a variety of sotoba. Sotoba in Japanese derives from stupa, and the five elements of Japanese cosmology. Actually, sotoba can also come in the shape of pagodas, stele, or other.
There are very few people at the cemetery, and I feel free to roam around haphazardly. I see a white stupa, and take a right. I see an old woman putting flowers at a tomb, and turn right. Families are supposed to take care of their own graves in Japan. Most tombs are square or rectangular, and there are stele on top of many with kanji characters engraved in the stone. Some have platforms, some have stone lanterns, some have several stele. Many don't have the wooden sotoba. Some stele have few characters, which I assume are family names, but others have much more text. I wonder what they say - how I wish I could read this! Some graves have a stone gate: a horizontal stone bar lying on two stone pillars. Some have withering flowers, others have a small statue on the side.
There are also monuments, bigger slabs of stone with inscriptions. Although there are a few explanatory boards, I don't understand most of them. I now start to see bigger statues, of Buddha, or a woman leaning against a tombstone. I see one tomb with "Forever with you" written in English. The more south I walk, the bigger the stone lanterns become. I walk past the foundations of a five-storied pagoda, which stood here for centuries. It burned down in 1772, was rebuilt, but burned down again when two lovers committed suicide here, and set fire to the wooden building. A curious, and tragic story. I am now getting closer to the most famous part of Yanaka Cemetery: the enclosure of the Tokugawa clan, where the very last shogun of Tokyo, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, was buried. Here, the tombs are monumental, with rows of stone lanterns, platforms with doors made of stone, and bigger graves. Unfortunately, the area is closed for visitors, and all I can do is to appreciate the view from a distance. When I finally make my way out of the cemetery, it is getting dark. Soon, Yanaka Cemetery will be enveloped by the night.

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Yanaka Cemetery > Japan > Asia

[Visited: February 2024]

Around the World in 80 Clicks

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