18smiths blog heyy killjoys;)

On Tuesday of this week we went to the Ueno Zoo and then to the Tokyo National Museum. We had to wake up early and go to the playground at 8:30 where we all walked to the train station and took the train all the way to Ueno.  I haven’t been to that exact museum but I have been to one similar in Bashamichi where it had more of the boat history.I was expecting  to see more of the type of buddha history but there was actually more art which I also enjoyed(:  When I was at the museum I was thinking a lot about the history and how each artifact told a really good story.

In the museum I found this really interesting statue, that looked like a Japanese version of a hades or a evil sprit, I thought it was interesting because it had a lot of details on the statue like having a horse type of faces on the knee caps. The statue was made with wood and carved by Kongbu-ji Wakayama and was from the Kamakura Period which is the 12th-13th century. The actual statue is called the standing Jinja-daisho. I think the reason this piece was made was to symbolize evil sprits. I think this is a unique piece because of the little art work in every part of the statue. The expression of the statue makes you tell he is angry or evil.

What really made me wanna look further into this statue is that it had a very interesting look and it had good detail so it made me more interested to look at it. I think what I could learn from that in Japanese culture is some of the demons and “bad guys” in the Japanese history.  I think the statue connected to early humans because thats probably the one that was most similar and also it probably reflected some of the earlier japanese myths.

I think that the statue has really no connection with the the silk road because its from a part of asian which the silk road route and didn’t really relate that much to the trades but I think that it some how connects to the items sold there because in the history of the silk road like the famous silk road statue of justice. Also I think the reason Japan doesn’t have many connections with other countries because the silk road was created during the second century B.C. when China first made serious connections with the greeks and Japan wasn’t founded until 600 B.C.