Kazaridaru means “decorated barrels” and refers to the sake barrels donated to Japanese temples.  They serve a practical use, in that the sake is used at festivals and ceremonies  but they are also highly decorative:

In some older Japanese texts the word used for sake is miki, written with the characters for ‘god’ and ‘wine.’  These days, the word miki (or o-miki when given its honorific prefix) is reserved for the rice wine used in Shinto rites and festivals and drinking it symbolises closeness to the gods.

Sake brewers donate the wine that shrines need for ceremonies and festivals, hence the towers of decorative, empty barrels at the entrances to Shinto temples.  There is even a Brewery Reverence Committee (shuzokeishinkai) at the temples, whose responsibility is to work out how much sake is required.  To request too much would be frowned on as wasteful.

Originally published in March 2013 as a response to Frizztext’s Tagged “K” challenge.