My friend and I were hiking from Kenchoji in Kita-Kamakura to Zuisenji in Kamakura when we literally stumbled over a Buddhist ceremony dedicating a monument in memory of insects who have met an untimely death at the hands of humans. There are multiple beetle sculptures in the park, which has a huge Yagura (burial cave) as a backdrop and a beetle/wire mesh cagelike structure in the center.
We actually participated in the ceremony and were able to make an offering at the altar. It was such a surprisingly sacred moment.
I took all the photos except for the first one (because I was not going to climb a huge cliff and hang over the side to get the picture. That photo I took from the Kyodo News.
BBC News from Elsewhere Blog filed this report on June 5, 2015:
A new monument has been built at a temple in Japan in memory of insects which have met an untimely end at the hands of human beings, it's reported.
The monument features a oversized beetle-like creature clambering over a rock, encircled by wire mesh cages. Anatomist Takeshi Yoro is the man behind the idea, driven by a life-long love of bugs, the Kyodo News agency reports. He hopes the monument will console the souls of the insects he has collected, and also send an environmental message. "I hope people will be fully aware what kind of an era it would be without insects," Mr Yoro tells the agency.
The site was inaugurated on Thursday at the Kenchoji Temple in Kamakura, just south of Tokyo. A group of about 50 people joined Mr Yoro at the service, which included a monk reading Buddhist sutras.
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