Myoshin-ji Temple Exhibition

Visiting a museum in the full-bloom cherry blossom season may sound a little bit freaky. However, the fact that today's destination is in Kyoto might be a good excuse.
Three willow trees welcomed me, as I walked out of the exit of Shichi-jo station on the Keihan Line. Cherry trees along the Kamo River really are a good attraction to sight-seers. Yet, I left the river bank immediately, and climbed a gentle slope towards the eastwards.
After a couple of blocks, I found Sanju-san-gen-do Temple on the right. The temple is quite a big name for Kyoto visitors. Yet, I went into the left side building, Kyoto National Museum, which exhibits paintings, calligraphies, and Buddhism-related implements of Myoshin-ji Temple.
Kyoto National Museum has a “modern” building. Here the word “modern” suggests its having been built during Japanese modernization days, which can be one of those modernization heritages. It has brick walls and bronze domes. It also has a modern gate, or let me call it a contemporary gate building, with a cool cafe as a part of it, which reminds me of some cafes of modern museums in some Western countries. Here the word “modern” does not necessarily mean they have exhibition of modern arts, but means their buildings are modern. Anyway, Kyoto National Museum exhibits Medieval things in their pre-contemporary “modern” building.

Zen-related drawings and instruments are exhibited. They show a certain spirituality and mind. The spirituality is certainly driven by Zen belief, while the mind is defined by the age.

The whole way through the exhibition, many Chinese drawings (kara-e) and Chinese instruments (kara-mono) are exhibited. They were brought from China to Japan, of course. Even some Japanese exhibits show that they were influenced by these Chinese masterpieces. In other words, “kara-gokoro” (China-influenced mind) in medieval Japan is featured here.

“Birds and Flowers of the Four seasons” is a set of four hanging scrolls with ink and light colors, which were drawn by Kano Motonobu (1477-1559) in 1543. They are usually preserved or hung in the Reiun-in Abbot's Quarters, and now exhibited in one room of the museum, Zen Space.
Each scroll is independently showing its own season --- spring, summer, autumn, and winter, from right to left ---, and has its own seasonal flowers and birds. In addition, they also make up one picture, or one piece of scenery: In spring, snow melts, and makes a water fall, which flows into summer rapids, whose distant landscape is curtained with moisture-laden air. The rapids gather into an autumn bountiful river, whose banks are covered with half-dried grasses, and the flow stops its running at the wintry pond. You can even feel the vapor from the surface of the icy pond. It must be an early morning of a cold winter day.
Not only do the water trends make the scenes one, but the birds are also communicating with each other across tapestries: Winter wild ducks are gathering to take warmth in the leftmost side of the pond where the dried grasses are sheltering them from the piercing wind. Three of the ducks are obviously looking up into the air, and one of the three is even shouting up over to something in the air. Its voice might never reach to the autumn wild geese flying over the mountains where the winter is sneaking up (or down?). The three geese look down at the pond as if they were searching for their rest stop. Their search might menace the ducks' peaceful resident. A summer snowy heron is quietly watching their communication, while spring sparrows are enjoying themselves carelessly.
The water flows from right to left, from spring to winter; the cold winds breeze from left to right, being warmed down (or up?) in spring via summer. All the creatures great and small are communicating with one another, and, there, even the seasonal order is reversible; being anterior and being posterior are in tandem.