Mountain Bounty

 

Day 9 of my walk along the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage, and I am walking through some remote mountain country I had no been to before.

It's early May, so plenty of flowers..... also industrial waste..... there is a lot of abandoned construction company sites filled with scaffolding and such.... also plenty of dumped vehicles...... but a few times I've seen industrial drums rusting.....

Snakes have been out and about for months already..... not sure what species this guy is, but its not a poisonous mamushi...... wouldnt bother me if it was.....

This gentleman was tending his hives. Don' t remember seeing many hives in Japan, but the honey must come from somewhere..... I suspect most not from Japan....

This couple have been harvesting fuki, a wild plant eaten quite a bit.... I believe it is called butterbur... pieces of the stem re often found in bentos...

The ubiquitous roadside shrine.... with fresh flowers.....

The bamboo shoot harvest was a couple of weeks ago around my village, but I guess up here in the mountains it is a few weeks later..... when trimmed, this barrowload will fetch a pretty penny from city folk.

I start to drop down into the area around Mito Onsen... where a small, civic matsuri is taking place.... the first kagura dances are ritual and not masked, but I decide not to wait around for the later dances....

The previous post in this series was on two interesting shrines I visited earlier in the day.

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Ankokuji Temple 25 Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage

 

Ankokuji is not far from Tadaji, temple 24, and even closer to Komyoji, temple 26, and is located in Kamiko, a little upstream from Shimoko.

I was surprised by how substantial a temple it was, and then I learned that it has the tombs of several generations of the Masuda Clan, who ruled the area. They were descendants of the Fujiwara governor Kunikane, who changed their names. They later moved from this area, where the national government offices were located, to the area where the city of Masuda is now located.

It was originally called Fukuenji and was said to have been founded in the early 8th century. It fell into disrepair but was revived in the early 12th century as a Tendai Temple and flourished under the patronage of the governor Fujiwara no Kunikane.

It again fell into disrepair after a big fire but was revived as a Rinzai Zen temple in the early 14th century by the wife of Masuda Kanenaga to pray for her deceased father.

In 1348 the temple was chosen to be the Ankoku Temple for Iwami Province.

In 741, the emperor ordered the building of a Buddhist monastery called Kokubunji in each province. It was an attempt to impose central control over the country. These Kokubunji were usually built at the site of the government offices of each province. The Iwami Kokubunji and government offices were located in this area of Shimoko.

In 1348 Ashikaga made Ankoku Temples in each province of the country for similar reasons. Whereas the traditional Buddhist sects were dominated by the Imperial court and their related families, when the warriors took over the country they usually chose Zen temples as they were new sects not yet under the control of the old guard.

There is a fine pair of ceramic komainu.

The hillside behind the main hall is planted with azalea bushes.....

Mu guess is that the red shrine in the pond is a Benzaiten shrine...

There is also a small karesansui garden in the front...

Shachi and other roof ornaments from earlier versions of the temple....

The previous post was on the interior sights of nearby Tada-ji Temple.

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Kuroshio Choritsu Ogata Library

 

Out in the middle of nowhere in Japan, you will come across huge, modern architectural marvels.

They come from a period in Japan before the bubble burst and the government was throwing huge sums of money at the provincial towns. Actually, the money was headed to the coffers of the construction industry, the Japanese equivalent of the American Military-Industrial Complex.

The vast majority of these projects were some kind of cultural centre,... museums, auditoriums etc and often with a local theme.

So, on the Kuroshio coast of the SW part of Kochi and Shikoku, we have this structure.

It is a combination of public library, literary museum, and a cultural centre.

My wifes cousins family are Zen priests nearby, so I have visited before. This time I was walking the long section of the Ohenro Pilgrimage between 2 widely spaced temples. The previous post can be seen by clicking this link.

Not only steps to the roof, but bench seating for outdoor performances....

The literary museum is dedicated to a local, 20th-century author whose pen name was Akatsuki Kambayashi.

Real name, Tokohiro Iwaki, he died in 1980 and wrote in the I Novel genre.

I read almost no fiction nowadays and so am not at all familiar with his work.

The architect was Norihilo Dan, a man whose other works I am not familiar with, though he seems to be well known for his environmental concerns.

I like the structure.

I like buildings that surprise with different arrangements of light and space as you explore a building.

It must have been quite impressive when newly built, with its gleaming white exterior.

Unfortunately the Japanese weather is not kind to exposed concrete, especially when white.

Maybe its wabi sabi.....

The previous post in this series on my walks between temples on the Shikoku Pilgrimage was on the stormy Kuroshio Coast.

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Inside Tadaji Temple

 

The honzon of Tada-ji temple in Hamada is an Eleven-faced Kannon, but it is a secret Buddha only visible once a year.

However, there is a Thousand-armed Kannon to be seen...

And to my great delight, several Fudo statues......

However, perhaps the most interesting thing to see are the 59 wooden statues which I have earlier referred to as "drowned Buddhas".

They were discovered floating in the sea below Tada-ji in 1870.

They have been dated to the Kamakura Period, and are about 1,000 years old.

In 1868 the new government unofficially encouraged anti-Buddhist sentiment, and in some areas this led to the destruction of many temples and their treasures.

On the Oki islands for instance, every single temple was destroyed. In other areas nothing was touched.

It seems to have been very much based on situations where local priests were particularly oppressive to the people, rather than any ideological or religious reasons.

The currents along the coast here are from the west, so its seems that the statues drifted from the west over a two year period.

One would think that with such a major collection of statues, and the known currents and time frames it would be possible to figure out where they came from.

Apparently not. The whole anti-Buddhist movement is avoided as a topic, which may explain the reluctance to find out....

After already being very old and probably somewhat deteriorated due to age, plus two years knocked around in water, has led to some eerie expressions on some of the statues.....

If you are visiting Tadaji, it is well worth ringing the bell at the priests house and office and having them open the main hall for you.

This link will take you to a short, earlier post on the drowned Buddhas.

The previous post in this series was on the exterior and grounds of the temple.

If you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published or made public. I post new content almost every day, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the last ten posts.