Ichibata Yakushi Temple 26 Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

 

I head inland from the coast of the Shimane Peninsula and reach Ichibata Yakushi Temple, number 26 on the pilgrimage.

From the car park and main entrance a road is lined with 108 stone lanterns.

At this level are several large halls, including the Hodo and the Honboshoin.

The temple was founded in 894 and the honzon is a statue of Yakushi Nyorai, known as the Medicine Buddha.

A fisherman "caught" the statue in the sea while fishing and took it home with him. After praying to it his mothers eyesight improved and he became a monk.

Several weathered Fudo Myoo stand at the start of a short flight of steps that leads up to the Niomon.

The temple is renowned for the healing of eye problems and is in a sense the Lourdes of Japan for eye ailments.

The temple was originally a Tendai sect temple, but in 1327 converted to Rinzai Zen and changed names to Setokuji.

Unusually, the Nio have lines of small statues of Enma and the other "judges of hell".

In 1653 it was renamed Ichibata-ji.

In 1790 it switched schools within Rinzai to the Myoshinji School.

In 1953, it became the head of its own school and now has 50 branch temples across Japan.

There is a nice set of full-size Rakan statues in front of the main hall, and other sights of interest..

Most of the architecture dates to the 19th and early 20th centuries...

There are some fantastic views looking down on Lake Shinji...

The last 2 photos are of some Fudo statues at the bottom of the stairs. There are 640 steps in all, but many are actually only a few cms high so its not a bad climb.

The railway line that stops at the bottom of the valley near Lake Shinji is called the Ichibata Railway and was built to bring pilgrims from Matsue and Izumo.

An irregular small, local bus runs up to the temple's car park.

For me, the most intriguing sight at the temple is the 84,000 Yakushi statues....... that will be the next post...

The previous post was on nearby Koizu Port and its two shrines.

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Dofuchi Kaikyo. The Narrowest Strait in the World

 

A strait is a narrow body of sea between two landmasses. Right now in the news the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman is much in the news.

Not sure how wide the channel must be for it to stop being a strait, but they can get quite narrow.

The narrowest strait in the world is in Japan, between Shodoshima and Maejima.

The casual visitor might mistake it for a river.

It is more than 2 kilometers long, but at its narrowest point is only a tad under ten meters wide.

At the town hall of Tonosho, the main town of Shodoshima but which mostly lies on Maejima, you can get a certificate memorializing your crossing of the strait.

At night it is a little more interesting to look at....

The previous post in this series on my walk around Shodoshima on the Shodoshima 88 temple pilgrimage was on two small temples and the walk into Tonosho.

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Koizu Inari Shrine & Sansha Shrine

 

At Koizu fishing port I headed over to see what seafood was being dried in the baskets, only to discover it was nets.

Koizu is, I think, the biggest port and fishing village so far along the Shimane Peninsula..

The road switchbacks up and out of the village. This is mostly a steep coastline.

I come to the familiar vermilion toriis of an Inari Shrine....

The shrine itself consists of just a honden..... bigger than in a roadside shrine, but smaller than a main shrine.

There does seem to be a kind of meeting hall though....

The 2d white fox on one of the torii is interesting.... don't remember seeing that anywhere else...

A little further up the road is the entrance to Sansha Shrine. The two shrines are adjacent so the Inari shrine may officially be a sub-shrine of Sansha....

I can find no information about the shrines history...

The Sansha Shrine is a little more substantial.

It is believed that this is the Suijin Shrine listed in the Izumo Fudoki. Later it became known as Sansha Daimyojin.

The main kami are the three Sumiyoshi kami, Uwatsutsu, Nakatsutsu, and Sokotsutsu.

This secondary shrine is an Umisachi Shrine.

These sub-shrines are Toshitokujin, and then a Miho Shrine with a Kinoyama Shrine...

The previous post was on the washboard rock coastline leading into Koizu.

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