Delightful travel in central Java begins and ends with batik. It is a process, a textile, an item of apparel.
Some batik forms are still believed to have mystic powers, like the kain panjang (“long cloth”). Wipe a crying baby’s face with a bottom corner, and she or he calms down at once. Women use inding to keep husbands faithful or attract future ones. Batik is worn in a house or a palace, marketplace or cornfield, and used as shawl or carryall for infants or small groceries. Motifs of the sacred and the diurnal, flora and fauna, India and China and Japan flow within the arabesque of its patterns in colors from muted brown to ruby red.

Batik is both national icon and family heirloom. It is the premier art of Indonesia, if only because it succinctly uses and is used by the others: shadow puppets are dressed in it and have been a motif since the 19th century; dance figures add a sensual element to a design, and dancers wear it in court—especially compelling when Tarun Batik (“Batik Dance”) is performed—and, on a public stage, women dancers embody its erotic suggestions; gamelan musicians and their instruments are abstracted into motifs. Batik is also a genre of Javanese painting.

Dewa Sanzan, Yamagata Pref.
Ascent to Sacred Peaks
Dewa Sanzan (Three Mountains of Dewa) names the natural array of Mt. Haguro (414 m), Mt. Gassan (1,984 m), and Mt. Yudono(1,504 m) located within Tsuruoka City in central Yamagata. A pilgrim-age and travel destination, Dewa Sanzan also is the site of shugendo, a spiritual practice using the rituals and sutras of Shinto and Mystic Bud-dhism to revere its three mountains. It’s a key Tohoku power spot that holds rituals for healing as well as trail ascent to sacred peaks, each at a particular time and season. The mountains of Haguro, Gassan, and Yudono symbolically stand for past, present, and future, the order in which pilgrimages proceed.

Entrance to this sacred domain from Mt. Haguro is via the gate of Zuishinmon, from which an ascent of 2,446 stone steps takes you past lush cryptomeria trees. Ideha Sanzan Shrine, atop Mt. Haguro’s summit, has a huge thatched roof and altars for Mt. Gassan and Mt. Yudono. A national park occupies the zone from the eighth stage to the peak and its Gassan Shrine, with some 350 species of mountain vegetation growing from spring through autumn. When you enter the Main Hall to worship at Mt. Yudono, remove shoes and be ready to observe a cleansing ritual. Ascending the three peaks and three time phases has been venerated and performed by locals since the Edo pe-riod (1603–1868) as a ritual rebirth. The pilgrim lodgings (shukubo) on Mt. Haguro, built in the Edo period, offer vegetarian cuisine featuring fresh mountain greens from Dewa Sanzan’s slopes. Savor this delight-ful food and you may feel the mountain’s power within.