From Kirobara to Onbara along the Gonokawa

 

After visiting the huge stump of what used to be a sacred tree I carried on upstream on the south/east bank of the Gonokawa River.

So far, on the third day of my walk upriver, more people seem to live on the opposite bank.... something I believe holds true at least as far as Miyoshi.

At some point I cross the border from Kawamoto Town into Misato City, not really a city but a collection of villages and small towns collected together administratively...

Misato has a total of 14 bridges, both rail and road, that cross the Gonokawa. That number may now be reduced as the rail bridges get dismantled since the line closure...

The first of these bridges ( or the last if you are coming downstream) is the Minato Bridge.

As with everywhere in Japan, small Buddhist altars can be found by the roadside.

Then it was Take Station, the next station on the former Sanko Line. Not dismantled and demolished like some on the line....

In England it would be called a Halt rather than a station as there were no buildings and never had any staff.

Of course Take means bamboo....

Up ahead, Mount Sanbe, the active volcano that is 1,126 meters high, and the highest point in Iwami. The river heads towards it for a bit more, todays destination, and then does a 180 turn and heads away from it.

There is not much else to see until the next settlement, Onbara.

It is kind of divided by a hill into two parts....

I chose to walk through the village rather than stay on the riverbank...

The last set of photos are just shots of things that attracted my eye before reaching the village shrine.

The previous post in this series documenting the third day of my walk up the Gonokawa River to  its source was on the sacred tree and shrine in Kirobara.

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Disappeared Japan Kirobara Shrine

 

After leaving Kawamoto and passing the Higashi Ohashi Bridge, I headed upstream to the little settlement of Kirobara, and I was excited to revisit a huge sacred tree. I was disappointed to see it had recently been cut down as it had become unsafe. The following pics are from a much earlier visit.

The tree was a Mukunoki, in English, the common name is Scabrous Aphanathe. It is said that in autumn, the leaves can be used as sandpaper. This one was thought to be about 300 years old and had a base circumference of more than 8 meters. The tree was considered to be the community's shrine.

In the first 2 decades of the twentieth century the government began a "shrine consolidation" program that, in esence, closed small local shrines and moved them to a larger shrine in the area. Before the program ended they had closed 100,000 shrines in Japan, about half of all shrines.

The primary reason was to shift people's focus from local, nature-based shrines to the national shrines like Hachiman or Tenmangu, Kasuga, etc. Another reason was that in the old days, Japanese in the countryside.... the vast majority of Japanese.... would take the day off work for matsuris, and in any small area there could be many small shrines each with its own festival day. Not good for the work ethic the government was trying to instill in the population. Western observers in the Meiji Period said that Japan could never industrialize because the population was quite lackadaisical in their work ethic and time keeping.

Yet another reason was that these local shrines were often set in a grove of old, large trees, and once the shrine was closed the trees were able to be cut for lumber. This point was strongly taken up by Japans first "enviromentalist" Minakata Kumagusu.

When the locals here expected their shrine to be destroyed they very quickly installed a small Tenmangu Shrine, pictured above, and their shrine was spared. My own village was not so lucky. The section of forest immediately behind my house used to be the local shrine. It was moved to the next village and since then no-one visits it. The shrine consolidation program is little known but was almost as big a factor in the creation of the modern Japanese religious landscape as the equally destructive separation of the Buddhas and Kami.

The previous post in this series documenting my walk up the Gonokawa River to its source was on the last bridge I passed, the Kawamoto Higashi Ohashi.

Around Kawamoto Higashi Ohashi Bridge

 

After leaving Kawanoto, heading upstream the river does an s-bend.

Not far out of town and the Higashi Ohashi Bridge comes into view.

It carries a road that heads up to Iwami Ginzan, Oda, and Mount Sanbe.

 

However, it doesnt get much traffic. Most traffic comes into Kawamoto from the downstream side.

The bridge dates to 1967 and is 165 meters long.

It replaced a suspension bridge built in 1923. At that time there were still few bridges across the Gonokawa River, with most crossings still done by ferry.

Consequently the suspension bridge was somewhat of a tourist attraction. It was destroyed by a flood in 1965.

The previous post in this series documenting my walk up the south bank of the Gonokawa River to its source was on the roadside Tatara Shrine at the edge of town.

Until the Meiji Period, the river marked the boundary between the Hamada Han and Iwami Ginzan, controlled directly by the Shogunate.

Usually in Japan, when a river marked a boundary, it ran down the middle of the river, but it is said that in this instance the Shogunate put the boundary on the opposite bank and took the whole of the river as its territory.

Not sure how that worked in practise, but the next section of the river was the route used by the Shogunate to transport the gold, first upriver to Miyoshi and then by land to Onomichi, then by ship up the Inland Sea.

When the Mori Clan controlled the mines the silver was shipped out along the Kitamaebune trade route along the Sea of Japan, the closest and easiest way. Once the Shogunate took over using that route would have meant sailing around the territory that the Mori had been confined to after their defeat by te Tokugawa, and so I guess they thought that not so smart and kind of inviting trouble...

Tatara Shrine Kawamoto

 

At the edge of Kawamoto on my way out of town is a small wayside shrine.

It is a Tatara Shrine, tatara being the traditional type of forge used in historical Japan to create iron and steel out of iron sand. Iron production was a huge industry bu in the mountainous areas of Izumo, but I have found numerous small Tatara shrines in the mountains of Iwami too.

Right next to the shrine was a small wayside Buddhist altar, a not uncommon thing, finding the two together as they were less differentiated in former times.

 

Inside the "shinto" shrine the largest statue was a Zuijin, shinto guardian equivalent to a Buddhist Nio. There was also what appeared to be a Buddhist statue along with a fox, an Ebisu, and a Daikoku. Quite an eclectic mix.

A large bottle of sake, or Omiki as it is called when offered to the kami, indicates that the shrine is somewhat active. Not sure which Buddhist deity is enshrined next door, but it has a Jizo as well.

The previous ost in this series documenting my walk up the Gonokawa River to its source was on passing by Kawamoto

Passing by Kawamoto

 

Kawamoto is the biggest town on the Gonokawa River since leaving Gotsu ate the mouth of the river about 35 kilometers downstream.

The river does a more than ninety degree bend here and the town is all on the inside of the curve, with the outside being steep cliffs and mountainside.

However, I choose to walk along the embankment and therefore completely by-pass the town itself.

Photo 6 shows Senganji Temple on the mountainside overlooking the town. I visited it earlier as it is one of the temples on the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage and that post has several photos looking down on the town.

The town has a big town hall, Police Station, Indoor Swimming Pool and primarily serves as a shopping and services centre for the surrounding rural and mountain communities.

The previous post in this series walking up the Gonokawa River to its source was on the Imbara to Kawamoto section.