Generally, I'm not impressed with any replica, which might disturb your imagination. When I visited the site in the summer of 2022, I marveled at the skyscraping pillars, which, scarce in Japan, were reportedly imported from Russia. What is more amazing, some of the dwellings are said to have been inhabited by local people until the Heian Period, when court culture was flourishing in Kyoto.
The current of the flowing river never ceases,
yet the waters never remain the same.
In places, where the current eddies, bubbles form on the surface,
burst and banish while others form in their places,
never for a moment still.
People in the world and their dwellings are the very same.
-Hojoki by Komo-no-Chomei (translated by Peter J. MacMilan, 2020)
When Kamo-no-Chomei was meditating in a hermitage near Kyoto in the 12-13th centuries, I wonder what life the local people in Tohoku Area were leading.
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