Visit to Buddhist Sculpture Studio [7月 31,2014 ]

On July 1 we, the members of the Practical Japanese Course, visited a Buddhist sculpture studio, “Seizan-sha,” in Shiga prefecture. Mr. Watanabe Seizan, the Great Buddhist sculptor of the studio, gave us various interesting explanations about the materials for Buddhist statues or the procedure of making them. We could see a staff member doing ‘Kirikane’ (decoration by gold leaf cutting) for a statue there. After that we tried curving a face on a wood with a chisel by ourselves. It was quiet difficult for all of us to make eyes or eyebrows look as they really were by curving. We had a meaningful study tour this time too, as we could see the actual workplace that we hardly had a chance to see in our daily life.