Tag: Nijo Castle and Tojiin Temple.)

The Secret of the Dragon and the Mysterious Urns    Kansai Council page on special features in Japanese architecture The painted dragon on the ceiling "roars."On the ceilings of such halls as Shokokuji Temple, Tenryuji Temple and Myoshinji Temple in Kyoto are drawings of dragons. In Shokokuji Temple, when you clap your hands, a long reverberating echo, traditionally called the "roaring dragon", is heard. This sound is in fact caused by the ceiling. A sound produced between two parallel planes, the floor and the ceiling, repeatedly bounces between them, causing acoustic reflections and subtle overlapping of echoes. The result is unique sound waves, the roar of the dragon.The phenomenon is more likely to happen when one side of the plane is slightly cambered, as seen in the ceiling of the hall of Shokokuji Temple, where the panels on the right and left of the ceiling, have a camber of about 10 cm....