Kasuga Shrine & The Great Chestnut Tree of Hoki

 

Valleys radiate out from the peak of Mount Daisen, and the one heading almost perfectly NE, carrying the Kaseichi River, is somewhat wider than most.

As the sun was approaching the horizon, I came across the entrance to a shrine and had to explore.

In front of the shrine was a huge, sacred tree, the Great Chestnut Tree of Hoki, a National Natural Monument.

It is one of the biggest chestnut trees in all of Japan, being 15 meters tall with a branch spread of 15 meters in one direction and 22 meters in the other.

At chest height, the trunk has a circumference of 9.7 meters. What is surprising is that it is still very healthy and producing fruit. It is one of the  100 Famous Giant Trees of Japan.

The shrine is a Kasuga Shrine and so enshrines the Kasuga kami, a collective of 4 kami.

It was founded in the mid to late 9th century by inviting the kami from Kasuga Taisha in Nara.

Takemikazuchi fought one of Okuninushi's sons during the Kuniyuzuri myth when Okuninushi gave Japan to Amaterasu and her descendants. The defeated son, Takeminakata, went into exile in Nagano and is enshrined at Suwa Taisha there.

Amenokoyane, the ancestral kami of the Nakatomi/Fujiwara was involved in the rites attempting to lure Amaterasu out of the cave she hid herself in. Kasuga Taisha is the tutelary shrine of the Nakatomi-Fujiwara.

Futsunushi is associated with Takemikazushi and accompanied him in the Kuniyuzuri myth. He is also considered the andestral kami of the Mononobe Clan. The fourth kami is Himegami, a name that usually refers to the "wife" of major kami.

In 1915, as part of the shrine consolidation program, 5 shrines were brought in and amalgamated with the Kasuga Shrine. One shrine enshrined Oyamatsumi, another enshrined Gozu Tenno, so is now considered Susanoo, and three Kojin shrines, which here have been all equated with Susanoo.

The sun was getting low, so this seemed like a good place to stop for the night.

The previous post in this series on day 46 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on the walk westward across the lower valleys of Mount Daisen.

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