Emerging from the pinnacle of the world’s tallest bronze Buddha and climbing right down to its proper ear, two specialist cleaners gave the imposing Japanese statue an annual spruce up Monday to assist it look its gleaming greatest.
Using high-pressure water weapons, the pair blasted mud and chook droppings off the Ushiku Daibutsu monument, which soars skywards over Ushiku metropolis, northeast of Tokyo.
The 120-metre (393-foot) construction is spruced up annually by the 2 males, who’ve been entrusted with the job for almost 1 / 4 of a century.
“It’s a very unusual task,” one of many veteran cleaners, 54-year-old Kazuyoshi Taguchi, advised AFP.
When he and Kazumi Minowa, 51, first took on the annual obligation, “we had no idea how to clean the statue and faced many difficulties, like our bodies being rolled and blown around by the wind”, Taguchi mentioned.
On Monday they carried rope and buckets of water up ladders to the very prime of the Buddha, which is 3 times as tall because the Statue of Liberty with out its plinth.
They then descended by the 480 coils of curly hair, every one a metre huge, earlier than blasting a yr’s price of white and gray filth from the statue’s ear.
As the town the place revered thirteenth century priest Shinran Shonin is believed to have established the favored Jodo Shinshu sect, Ushiku is a crucial place for Japanese Buddhism.
Visitors to the monument can take an elevator inside the huge physique and peer out of home windows at its chest, 85 metres above the bottom.
Neither newbie boxer Taguchi nor fishing fan Minowa had a background in climbing, however Taguchi is “proud” to have carried out the particular activity — historically referred to as “soot removal” — for such a very long time.
“Soot removal” is an annual occasion at Japanese temples, the place monks and worshippers wipe mud from altars and clear buildings.
“Usually we use bamboo brooms, but they are just too small for this Buddha statue,” mentioned Ushiku temple consultant Masahiro Maekawa.
“This event also has the meaning for us of reflecting on the year, and starting a new one with a fresh mindset,” he added.
AFP
AFP
AFP