ASAKUSA CULTURE & LIGHTS

For five evenings at the end of October and the start of November, films are projected onto the buildings of Sensoji at Asakusa. Two parts of the temple carry them: the main hall, used for this for the first time, and the Hozomon, the inner gate, which was used for the first time last year.

The projection mapping

Each of the two films lasts about six minutes, and they are thrown onto the south faces of the two buildings in turn through the evening. The same films run all night, so nothing is missed by arriving late, and the crowd is heaviest in the first hour.
What is projected comes out of the temple's own holdings. There are the large ema, the painted wooden tablets given to temples as offerings; the Kanbun engi, a picture scroll that sets out the legend of the temple's founding; and ukiyo-e prints connected with Sensoji. Between them they cover the 1,400 years the temple counts from its founding.

Watching costs nothing and needs no booking. Rain does not stop the projection, though bad weather may.

The garden and the ema hall

The Denboin garden lies inside the temple grounds and is closed to the public for most of the year. The state designated the garden a Place of Scenic Beauty in 2011. For these five days it is opened to ticket holders, along with the Emado, the hall where about fifty of the large ema are kept, among them works by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Hasegawa Settan and Henmi Kazunobu, who is also known by the name Kano.

At intervals through the day and into the evening the garden is filled with low fog, made to lie over it as a sea of cloud lies below a mountain, with the rocks, the trees and the water standing out of it. The organisers say the effect is meant to bring out the shape of the garden and the story attached to it.

After dark the garden is lit, and dancers perform a short piece several times through the evening. It was made for this event, and takes as its model the Kinryu no Mai, the golden dragon dance that belongs to the temple.

Two further programmes run on single days and must be booked: a prayer service inside the temple, and a tour of the repair work under way on the Denboin itself, which is an Important Cultural Property.