Daisenji was said to be founded in 718 when a man, while hunting a deer, came to the realization that killing was a sin and so became a monk and enshrined a statue of Jizo in a hermitage on the mountain.
In 865 it became a Tendai sect temple and grew into a major shugendo site with 160 temples and 3,000 warrior monks.
Of course, in early Meiji when Shugendo was outlawed and the government decreed the separation of Buddhas and kami, followed by a campaign against Buddhism, everything changed and many structures were lost.
What is now the main hall was the Dainichi Hall, and the Jizo was moved there.
A development of the Jizo faith that developed out of Mount Daisen was for the protection of livestock.
This led to Daisen Gyuuba Ichi, the only livestock market with a religious twist. By the Edo Period it was one of the top 3 livestock markets in Japan, and in the Meiji Period it was the biggest.
The statue of the cow is said to have been made out of the nose-rings of cows.
Nearby is a Goma Hall with Fudo Myoo...
And near to that the Kannon Hall, the goal for this pilgrimage.
From here the path leads further up the mountain to the Niomon. Obviously this was the entrance to the main temple in earlier times.
From the Niomon, the path goes up to the shrine.
At 700 metres, it is the longest shrine approach in Japan.
During the opening of the mountain ceremonies each year, thousands of people carrying torches snake up the path, making an awesome sight.
It was getting late, and I wanted to get down the mountain a bit, as I was sleeping out that night and it would be warmer the lower I would be able to get, so I chose not to go all the way up to the shrine
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