These paper lanterns are found at the entrance of Yasaka Shrine temple, one of the oldest and most famous temples in Kyoto. It used to be called Gion Shrine. In fact, it is the spiritual and artistic heart of Gion, the famous Geisha neighborhood, with a history of about 1500 years. As mentioned before, at the start of my stay in Japan, I was focused on details. So after the first night visit to that temple, I captured this image, which represents primarily a pattern full of color and contrast of Japanese spirituality. At the time, I had lived in Kyoto just for a few weeks, mostly observing than actually understanding it. Slowly, in the next phase, I tried to understand what I saw. And like any discovery process, it all starts with a hypothesis.

Night display of paper lanterns at the entrance in Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, Japan.

The basic elements were the temple, its religion … Buddhist / Shinto (completely new and different from what I inherited), Japanese spirituality and tradition, paper, light, kanji, color, contrast. This combination generated the following hypothesis …. “These are are definitely some stories and traditional Japanese philosophical quotes”. Eventually, the color and contrast succeded to overcame the hypothetical spiritual depths and the image became the favorite of the moment, taking its place of honor as the wallpaper on my everyday desktop.

Even though I was in the land of hyper-technology, I have discovered that computers break down even here! So, not being able to restore the system myself, I went back to the computer store where I had bought my computer. The manager was  passionate about English and … tennis. His passions turned out to be some sort of mystery revealing catalyst. Let me explain! When I turned on the computer to prove its technical issues, the man saw the background image and exclaimed: … “Aaa !! You also liked the Yasaka sponsors’ display … original …. right ?”

At that moment, my ideological amalgam of generating hypothesis was shattered by … reality. It was actually the display list of the Temple sponsoring companies and the events that take place there. In the world I came from, that is typically a list of logos on a white wall…not in Japan!!!

And in this way I added more « bricks » to the basis of understanding the Japanese miracle. Japan, described by others as the Land of Contrasts, seemed to be just like that…and the contrasts are of all kinds …. like the long way from white to black …..