Forest Kami

Nikko was a place I hadn’t researched. It looked like a good day trip out of Tokyo and that was the whole plan — train up on our last day in the country, spend it there, get lunch, come back for an evening flight.

What we found was a complete temple complex sitting inside an old-growth forest, and the scale of the trees changes how the buildings read. Everything felt larger and more deliberate than I’d expected. The pagoda most of all: five tiers of red and gold lacquer standing thirty-five metres up among trunks that make it look modest.

The tiers aren’t decoration. They run earth, water, fire, wind and void, bottom to top.

It was Golden Week and the entrance was packed with people there to pay their respects. I shot over them, stayed out of the way, and did what I could to defer — it was a good thing to be standing in the middle of. Seeing that many people turn out for their own beliefs was worth as much as the photograph.

That’s where the title comes from. Kami as spirit, and the way the forest and the built things in it aren’t really separable there.