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about

During my research for this project I found a surprising number of references to and descriptions of the sound of the evening bell of Mii-dera. Matsuo Basho penned the following:

“Seven sights were veiled
In mist – then I heard
Mii-dera’s bell.”

And the monk Gen’yo wrote in his diary:

“There were many things to make us lonely, with the bell of Mii-dera lingering faintly in the air.”

Other descriptions came from diaries (such as the anonymous diary Travels Round the East, etc.) and unsurprisingly the sound was selected as one of the 100 Soundscapes of Japan. With such a historically significant sound being the last stop on my journey before arriving at my final destination of Sanjo Ohashi, I found myself regularly wondering what it was that makes this bell so special as I travelled down the Tōkaidō. I arrived at Mii-dera a little after noon and the bell is tolled a little before 5:00, but I was more than happy to wait a few hours as the sun had finally come out again and the temple itself is quite wondrous. Interestingly, I discovered that tourists can pay 300 yen (about £1.50) to toll the bell themselves, but I of course waited for the real thing. Eventually, the little old lady running the stall for tourists closed up shop and made her way into the shrine and rang the evening bell; she gave it everything she had, using her entire body weight to swing the suspended wooden log that is used to ring the giant bell and bracing before every toll. She made the attempts made by the tourists seem absolutely pathetic in comparison. At the end she bowed to the bell, left the shrine, and then turned to me and bowed in thanks. After switching my recorder off I asked her why she had thanked me to which she explained that – despite the fact that all of the temple’s decorations and souvenirs are to do with its bell – most visitors don’t pay much attention to the bell even when it’s being struck; most are content to take a picture and move on. She was thanking me for listening. Ironically, what is likely one of the nation’s most famous sounds is still appreciated more visually than aurally.

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from D​ō​ch​ū​ki: Recordings from a Soggy Sleeping Bag, released May 24, 2015

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