Narrow Road To The Deep North 46

The Yomeimon Gate is a national treasure, also known as the ‘Twilight Gate,’ because it takes all day until twilight to see everything on it’s 36 feet high double layers. Painted in red and blue and green, gilded and lacquered, the more than 500 carved dragons and birds, humans and flowers, and Chinese lions, phoenixes and other imaginary spiritual animals, are far too much to take in at once. The opulence is very un-Japanese.
The twelve pillars are alabaster white, and carved in scrolling patterns. One, the Mayokeno-sakabashira, is inverted, to indicate life’s imperfection, and the beginning of decline. A menukino-ryu flying dragon is carved on the white crossbar, flanked by two double-horned horse-dragons. Kanō Tan'yū’s paintings of two more dragons fly on the ceiling of the passage, one going up to the sky, the other coming down to the ground.