SHOUKI GOODS
“SHO-KI” Household Guardians
A Chinese legend has it that when a Dynasty
emperor was sick he had a fever dream in which he was attacked by demons and
SHOKI appeared and ate them.
When the Emperor woke up he was cured so he instructed artists to paint
the SHOKI figures as he remembered them.
According to this old Chinese legend,
people have believed in “Sho-Ki” as a god who keeps disease and misfortune away from their
home.
Goblin-figuredroof tiles, known as“Oni-gawara”often found on Japanese temple roofs, are also believed to dispel
evils away. Kyoto has many temples carrying the Oni-gawara that the evils have
no place to settle in those temples.
To protect people houses from the dispelled
evils, most people in Kyoto used to put a Sho-Ki statue on their roof, because
the god Sho-Ki was believed to be much stronger than the goblins that protected
the temples. Sho-Ki statues became quite familiar to people in Kyoto, and
since then, they have been called “Sho-Ki-san (Our Sho-Ki)”Now a days Kyoto has an increasing number of modern
apartment buildings among the traditional houses, where your chance to
finding Sho-Ki is getting shorter and shorter. However, a lot of
Sho-Ki statue are still waiting to be found on the street side of the traditional house roofs.
You could find a variety of characteristic appearances in Sho-Ki on taking
a walk in Kyoto, and then you will know that this is the most wonderful
way to enjoy walking in Kyoto.
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