Shosoin-ten
Some days ago, I made a small trip to Nara with my sibling to see the exhibition Shosoin-ten, which is our annual routine.
Nara National Museum organizes the exhibition, formal title for this year (2023) is "The 75th Annual Exhibition of Shōsō-in Treasures",
an explanatory long name, and possibly be a cause of certain communication-gap for foreigners.
To pronounce the exhibition, "Syousouin-ten" is good. To Google, "Shosoin-ten"; official web page is from here.
Inconvenient that the ticket link from that page might not be bound to the English ticket site.
Tickets are only buyable during a limited period (usually, from top October unto mid November; print out or keep in your smart phone a screenshot containing the 2-d barcode).
To check the past events, Nara National Museum-Past Exhibitions(Japanese) is a reliable resource of the past exhibitions including Shosoin-ten(正倉院展).
Shosoin is a warehouse that holds goods related to Emperor-Shomu and his wife who lived in the earlier half of Nara-era(8th century).
It is a time-capsule that carries ancient goods to the modern world.
Shosoin-ten is an annual exhibition we can see the collection's small portion in each year, whose contents are changed year to year.
Honorable families in this country may hold aged goods hundreds of years old.
More than thousand years, however, answer can be given only by a limited institution related to the imperial family.
Although Shosoin's contents are called "treasures", some of them must have been just common goods at the moment of their birth.
Reason why they are included in the collection consists of several cases.
Some goods are there because of their foreign nature. Some are having been the emperors favourites. And some are just by an accidental luck for each.
Nara is said to be the silk road's eastern terminal. Apparently, an actual road does not pass between the continent and Nara.
In an old time, to go over the sea was risky for both humans and materials.
Foreign goods were thus respected and keeped under a special care.
Sometimes, Shosoin has numbers of individuals of the same kind.
Checking them, we often feel existence of certain common sense somewhat different from that of modern.
In many cases, differences come from technical immatureness of the days those items were produced and used.
Even so, there may be found some devices manufacturers must have made to cope with the circumstances of the old days.
It is a deep resource of questions and inspirations.
Apart from technologies, some items are so beautiful that worldly desires for materials might go away from you.
Nara and deers
Nara-city is famous with deers walking around in human spaces.
Actually, they are important as one of sightseeing resources, but of course, they were originally native,
and religious air of Nara has taken good care of them.
During World War II was a period deers in Nara-city decreased unto the minimum number, when about 70 individuals was remaining.
Now, about 1,200 are said to live in the area of Nara-city.
In a natural condition, they are said to increase twice within four years. So, there possibly exists some regulating mechanism for their numbers.
Many die by traffic accidents.
Since 2017, to kill them to regulate their number was admitted, which was helpless because they are sometimes harmful as they eat agricultural products.
Male deers' antlers are cut in one of Nara's annual events.