Kiwi Yamabushi

Kiwi Yamabushi

Tohoku’s 29-Metre Middle Finger to Kyoto

Why Japan’s wildest mountain monks rejected Kyoto’s state-approved aesthetics.

Jul 26, 2026
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Tohoku’s 29-Metre Middle Finger to Kyoto

Haguro-san’s National Treasure Five Story Pagoda.

Haguro-san’s National Treasure Five Story Pagoda is famously shiraki (白木), literally ‘white wood’, what we would call in English ‘blank’ or ‘unvarnished’. Even after more than 650 years in brutal snow country, the tower famously still has zero paint, varnish, or unn…

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