Hashi Beach, Harbour, & Tsuto Shrine

 

After leaving Kushiro, the old San-in Do is a narrow, single-lane road that runs near the rail line and  comes into the back of Hashi completely avoiding the new and busy Route 9

Home to a pretty good "Oceanarium", the beach is part of the Iwami Seaside Park and is very popular in summer.

At the far end of the beach is the tiny harbour for Hashi.

On the hillside up above the harbour is Tsuto Shrine.

This is the main shrine for the town, although just over a hundred years ago an Otoshi Shrine and an Inari Shrine were merged with it. It is yet another local shrine listed in the Engi Shiki.

It is believed that the ruling clan, an offshoot of the clan that colonized the Iwami coastal region in ancient times established a shrine to their ancestors here. Their ancestral deity was Komemochitsuki, and in some way he is connected with mochi rice cakes. They are connected to the clan who founded Kushiro Shrine, and the shrines down near Masuda.

This seems to be the eastern limit of their territory. They were obviously placed here by the Yamato as a check on the power of Izumo. Further East and into Izumo it seems the Mononobe were the clan sent for the same purpose.

In 889 the clan enshrined Tagorihime, the elder of the three Munakata, daughters of Susano.

A myth/legend has it that as a young girl  Tagorihime was too volatile even for Susano, so she was sent away and came ashore on Hashi Beach. A local couple raised here as their own. She never spoke.

Later, a signal fire lit to warn of an attack on Izumo by a "foreign" enemy, caused Tagorihime to reveal her true identity and a dream of Susano that if Tagorihime returned, Izumo would be successful in defeating the enemy. Tagorihime set off but her foster parents chased after her to stop her. She hid behind a rock at what is now a shrine in Gotsu. Her fraught foster parents passed by her and died on the slopes of Asari Fujisan, a coastal mountain near my place. Tagorihime reached Izumo and the enemy was defeated.

The oldest version of this story dates to the 15th century at Hinomisaki Shrine, though it is probably much older. It is said that this shrine  and the one in Gotsu where the rock is were both territories of Hinomisaki Shrine.

Around the main shrine building are an Ebisu Shrine, a Konpira Shrine, a Yasaka Shrine, and a Tenmangu Shrine. The small shrine slightly above the main shrine is believed to enshrine Komemochizuki.

The previous post in this series on the Chugoku and the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimages was on Majima and the Benten Shrine I stopped in at on my walk to start heading up the coast again from Hashi.

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Inside HITOHAKU

 

HITOHAKU in Sanda, Hyogo is a huge natural history museum.

I covered the exterior architecture in the last post in this series.

In English, it is called the Museum of Nature and Human Activities.

When I visited in 2017 there was little information in English, but now the whole museum is covered with smartphone-readable info in multiple languages.

It is not just a museum,but also includes several research facilities.

The museum's collections are staggering, with 152,000 geological items and more than 2,000,000 biological specimens.

Included in that are 1.3 million insects, 68,000 animals, and 641,000 plants.

The museum is spread over four floors and includes sections on the natural history of Hyogo, and the always-popular-with-kids dinosaur exhibits.

The human impact on nature is also covered.

I found the msueum and its displays surprisingly interesting, and good value. The most expensive entry fee is 200 yen.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the wonderful exterior of the museum.

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Majima Island. Westernmost point of the 35th Parallel & Abandoned Benten Shrine

 

Majima Island is an outcropping on the coast between Tsunozu and Waki in Gotsu. It may have been a tiny island at some point, but now it is connected to the land by a sandy hill.

There are a few tiny fishing boats on the beach, but no harbour,

Steps lead up to a first torii with a Jizo statue nearby.

When I first visited Majima it had a Benten shrine on top, but now no maps show a shrine at all, leading me to believe it has been disestablished.

After the first torii sand dunes lead to the path to the "island" itself.

After a narrow ridge connecting to the island some steep steps lead to the top. Erosion has seriously undercut the concrete steps.

A second torii stands near the top, though it has been missing some of its parts  for as long as I have been here.

A pair of ceramic komainu stand guard.

In the last day or so I have come across three different sets of ceramic komainu, all in completely different styles. First there was the pair at Ankoku Temple, then the pair at Kantake Shrine, and now these.

The views from on top are fantastic, looking back down the coast past Tsunozu, Ninomiya, & Uyagawa.

Looking up the coast past Waki, Kakushi, then then "downtown" Gotsu with the huge paper factory at the mouth of the Gonokawa River and then past Asari with the mountains of Iwami Ginzan visible...

A sign on the coast road shows that  Majima id the westernmost point on Honshu of the 35th Parallel .

The 35th Parallel pretty much cuts Hinshu in half and passes from south of Tokyo and then south of Kyoto before leaving Japan at this point.

This is also the spot where local fishermen rescued a couple of hundred Russian sailors from a sinking ship during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. The story can be found in this old post of mine.

The previous post was on three shrines I visited yesterday.

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