Japan's Bells & Sound Culture

About this book

A temple guide gives a famous bell a paragraph. An academic catalogue gives you metallurgy without a single listening tip. Japan's Bells & Sound Culture does the missing job: 200 Japanese bells — great temple bonsho, shrine and civic bells, wind chimes and altar bowls, the foundries that cast them and the rituals that ring them — in one uniform format, every entry giving History & Setting, Form, Material & Making, Sound & Striking, and Visiting, Listening & Care, each entry written in full at 200+ words.

Todai-ji's eighth-century giant and Chion-in's bell that needs a team of seventeen. Benkei's homesick bell at Miidera and the serpent bell of Dojoji. The suzu you ring yourself at every shrine, Kawagoe's time bell still striking over Edo streets, Hiroshima's peace bell waiting for your hand. Nambu iron furin, inside-painted Edo glass, Takaoka copper song — then into the foundry for alloy, mould earth, the sweep template, pour day and tuning, and out again to the 108 strikes of New Year's Eve.

A front chapter teaches you to listen in four checks — attack, bloom, beating & hum, and the long decay into ma. There is no audio and there are no photographs: the sounds are taught in words, for the ear. Fees, hours, schedules, stock and prices are never asserted; every entry asks you to confirm them on the official channel, and states honestly which bells you may ring and which you may only hear.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.