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even legs this time. The tanuki didn't realize him. Yet the priest felt weird and left the kitchen.
At last he made up his mind to sell it off.
A curio dealer came to the temple. At first glance he found it was an excellent teakettle. But he
suggested a cheap price as if it were worth nothing. Unexpectedly the priest answered,
"All right, all right. Take it away soon."
The dealer was pleased very much because he would be able to make a profit on it. He went
back holding it happily and put it in his shop. It looked every inch valuable and splendid
teakettle.
At the night, as he heard some noise in the shop, he went down and saw the teakettle with the
tanuki'si head and tail dancing. He was astonished and sold it to another dealer next morning.
The next dealer also was weird and sold it to another dealer. So did the next dealer and next.
After the several dealers handed it over, an idea hit the last one.
He planned showing the dancing kettle to the people and make a large profit. He built a cottage
at an empty space in the town and called the people into the show collecting some admission
fee.
With clicks of wooden clappers and the music of a wooden flute and drums, the tanuki kettle
started dancing getting into the rhythm. Here it came! The audience was excited and gave a big
applause to the tanuki kettle. This rumor was spread widely into the town and more and more
people had come to see it. The cottage was filled with people day after day. The last dealer got
great deal of profit. And he kindly shared that earned money with his companies of the curio
dealers.
So that somebody named this teakettle "Bunbuku-Chagama".
"bun" means to divide or share, "fuku or buke" means good luck or fortune and "chagama"
means a teakettle in Japanese.
The teakettle, however, danced no longer but kept sleeping as if it might have been too tired to
dance since then. It was sent back to the Molin-ji Temple and has been treasured as an
important and precious thing of the temple still now. ]
Ashikaga
Ashikaga mit seiner schönen Bergkulisse und vom Watarase-Fluss durchflossen ist mit fast
165.000 Einwohnern heute bemüht, eine moderne Stadt zu sein, hat aber eine sehr alte Kultur
und Tradition.
Die beiden berühmtesten Kulturgüter sind die Ashikaga Gakko (Schule) und der Banna-ji
(Tempel), der enge Verbindung zu dem Ashikaga-Shogunat hatte.
Die Ashikaga Gakko ist die berühmte älteste Universität Japans und wurde 1921 zum
wichtigen Kulturgut erklärt. An ihr konnte man bereits im Jahre 1410 Konfuzianismus,
chinesische Medizin und Orakelwesen studieren. 1550 zählte man 3000 Studenten.
Nach der Meiji-Restauration wurde die Schule auch für das Volk geöffnet, leider aber 1872
geschlossen. 1981 begann man mit der Restaurierung.
Das Gelände hat 3 Tore im chinesischen Stil, die alle von 1668 stammen.
Der Schrein ist der älteste Konfuzius-Schrein, der in Japan noch existiert. Die sitzenden
Figuren sind Konfuzius und Fürst Ono no Takamura, der den Schrein im Stil der chinesischen
Ming-Dynastie errichten ließ. Die Konfuzius-Statue von 1535 gehört zu den Kulturschätzen der
Tochigi-Präfektur.
Links vor dem Eingang steht ein Baum mit Namen Kaiju. Man zog ihn aus Samen, die von
einem Baum auf Konfuzius Grabmahl stammen.
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