Zenjoji Temple 24 Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

 

Zenjoji, the 24th temple on the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, is an ancient mountaintop temple belonging to the Tendai sect.

It is also the 10th temple of the Izumo Kannon Pilgrimage, and the post I did on that visit is worth a look as it was a different time of year, a different time of day, a different camera, and I was in a different mood.

On both my visits, there was still a priest in residence, but I believe that is no longer the case.

According to the temple history it was founded by Gyoki. I swear that guy got around even more than Kobo Daishi.

The honzon is a Sho Kannon, an Important Cultural Property.

It is a secret Buddha, but to the right of the altar is a lovely, small thousand-armed Kannon.

 In earlier times, it was a powerful temple with many landholdings...

There is quite a large Inari Shrine, and a small Benten shrine (last photo)

The views over Okuizumo are expansive...

Not sure why, but I get much nicer vibes from a Tendai temple than a Shingon, even though they are similar sects.

The obsession with Kobo Daishi in Shingon is a bit of a turn-off for me...

The current main hall was constructed in 1758.

The previous post was on the walk over the mountains from Susa Shrine...

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Hinomisaki Shrine

 

Hinomisaki is a grand shrine at the western tip of the Shimane Peninsula, in a small cove under the Hinomisaki Lighthouse, the tallest in East Asia.

When showing visitors around, I often encourage them to visit Hinomisaki Shrine instead of, or at least as well as, Izumo Taisha.

The shrine claims to have been founded in 536BCE, which is as absurd as the claim that Jimmu became emperor more than a hundred years before that. It is said that Susano decided to "settle" here after "creating" Izumo, and his son built a shrine to him nearby.

A shrine to Amaterasu was established on Fumijima, the sacred island offshore that I covered in the last post.

The Amaterasu shrine was moved here in 948. At the same time a Jinguji was established within the shrine so there was a Yakushi Hall, a Sutra Hall, a 3 storey Pagoda and a Tahoto Pagoda, a Daishi Hall, and a bell tower

In Kyoto, the shrine became famous as a centre of Shugendo.

The current buildings, most of which are Important Cultural Properties, were built under order of Tokugawa Iemitsu and were completed in 1644. They are in Gongen Zukuri style.

Both the local Matsudaira Daimyo and the Shogunate supported the shrine with large grants of land and Hinomisaki Shrine was the second largest shrine in the whole San-in region, after Izumo Taisha.

Now here comes the intriguing thing. The main hall, called Sunset Palace, enshrined Susano, and the smaller, Upper Hall enshrined Amaterasu, but in 1868 they switched them. This is not mentioned anywhere in the shrines website nor in the Japanese wikipedia page. Its all written as if Amaterasu was always the main kami.

When I first visited here more than twenty years ago I had recently learned about the chigi, the cross pieces on the roof. If the ends are cut horizontally, then the kami is female, if vertical then male.

Here the Amaterasu hall has a male chigi. I asked a young priest about it and what he said was that in 1868, when modern Shinto was created with Amaterasu at the top, it was decided here that people praying to Susano in the main hall had their backs to the Amaterasu Hall and that this was considered disrespectful, so they swapped. Because the buildings are Important Cultural Properties they could not be altered, so the chigi remained. I strongly suspect that nowadays they would not be so eager to share this history.

As with so many other shrines throughout Japan around 1868, not only did they remove all the Buddhist connections, but changed the kami too.

There are lots of secondary shrines inside and just outside the grounds including an Inari, and a Munakata. There is a line of 19 shrines representing various shrines that were brought into the shrine in the early 20th century during the shrine closures.

Most interesting to me is a Korean Shrine that enshrines Susano and Isotakeru. It is thought this was here before the Hinomisaki shrine was moved here from nearby. It links to the Korean Forge Shrine nearby as well as the Korea-Susano shrines down in Iwami.

The previous post in this series documenting my deep exploration of the Japan Sea Coast was on Fumijima Island.

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Yakumo Fuketsu Wind Cave

 

If you ask a Japanese person if Japanese people eat pheasant, you will almost certainly get an emphatic "absolutely not". However, just outside Susa Shrine in the mountains of Izumo, there used to be a restaurant specializing in pheasant dishes. Modern Japanese have little knowledge of historical diets in Japan. If it walks, crawls, swims, or flies, then the Japanese people used to eat it. Quite like pheasant myself, but haven't eaten it in Japan, though I sometimes see and hear one in my garden and nearby rice paddies.

After leaving Susa Shrine, I head west further into the mountains towards the next pilgrimage temple on the Chugoku 33 Kannoin Pilgrimage.

I briefly visited Fukusenbo, a Jodo Shinshu temple.

I have no idea what the standing and horizontal carvings are about....

I do enjoy wooden statues that have weathered and eroded and reveal another aspect of their personality.....

Immediately adjacent to the temple was the reason for stopping, the title of todays blog post, the Yakumo Fuketsu Wind Cave.

In English, the term for such a geological feature is a blowing cave, and in essence it is a type of natural air-conditioning.

What happens is that in the winter cold air travels into the mountain through gaps in the rocks and this cools the rocks in the interior. In the summer air passing over the cold rocks escapes at places like here. If you descend two levels in the cave the temperature is 5 degrees celsius on the hottest summer day. Traditionally the spaces were used as cold storage for various crops, but now it is for tourists to cool off.

Even the exterior "caves" have a temperature noticeably cooler.

From here I headed deeper into the mountains.

Thatched houses and semi-abandoned shrines....the interior of Shimane....

The road keeps climbing and settlements disappear and only forest on either side of the road..

Eventually I cross a pass and start to descend.....

Isolated farmhouses start to appear and then settlements come into view...

This is the landscape of most of the land area of Japan...

It has been 4 days of walking since the last temple on this pilgrimage, Tada-ji in Hamada....

The previous post in this series on Day 40 of my Chugoku Pilgrimage walk was on the interesting Susa Shrine.

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