Garden at Taimasan Shrine

 

This is the second post on the garden at Taimasan Shrine. In the previous post, I showed how the garden looked in 2010, but this post is photos from a visit at the end of 2021.

In the second and third photos, a new garden has been built between the entrance to the shrine and the old temple garden. This new garden was built by the current head priest and is composed of two parts, Iwakura, and Iwasaka.

An Iwakura is a rock into which a kami descends, and an Iwasaka is a rock that mark the boundary of sacred space.

This makes this new garden very much a shinto garden.

The major difference in the main garden from when I visited 11 years earlier, is the white gravel area.

Also, this was the end of May, so some of the small trees are now full of leaves, and there are still a few flowers left on the azalea bushes.

For information on the history of the garden, please refer to the previous post.

The previous post in this series on  MountTaima, literally Hemp Mountain, was on the garden 11 years earlier....

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Reviving a Lost Garden Part One

 

At almost 600 meters elevation, high on Mount Taima near Hamada is a wonderful garden, truly off the beaten track.

A shrine was established here in 889 after a monk received an oracle. In 947, a temple, Sonshoji, was established just below the shrine. It had an Eleven-faced Kannon as its honzon.

In 969, further shrines were built and over the centuries the shrine^temple complex grew.

In the early 16th century the shrine^temple complex was burned down during the war between the Ouchi Clan and Amago Clan.

It is believed that in the mid to late 17th century the garden was created.

In 1836 a huge landslide destroyed the compkex.

In 1844 the shrine was rebuilt but at the temple, only the priests' quarters were rebuilt.

In 1868, with the Shinbutsu Bunri edict, the temple was moved to Koyasan.

In 1872 the shrine was destroyed by the Hamada Earthquake and then rebuilt soon after.

In 1942 the great garden scholar and designer Mirei Shigemori "discovered" the garden.

In 1979, Shigemori's son and collaborator, Kando Shigemori visited.

Obviously, by now, all the overgrown vegetation has been removed and the bushes pruned back to reveal the stonework.

The current head priest of the shrine used to be a gardener in Kyoto, and I believe it has been he who has been personally responsible for the revival.....

All the stone used is native to the mountain.

From one edge of the garden are views down onto the coast....

Apparently, some of what appear to be smaller stones are in fact huge boulders buried deeply, inplying that the stone work of the garden must have been built around some fixed features.... There are no Crane or Turtle arrangements, although the uppermost grouping of stones is considered a Horai arrangement.

These photos were taken during a visit to the shrine in the winter of 2009. Next up I will show how the garden now looks.

Some other gardens I've covered recently include the Ryushintei Garden at Sorinji Temple, and the Chofuteien garden, both of which I highly recommend.

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Disappeared Japan Yamane Residence Hamada

 

In October 2009 the Russian sail training ship Nadehzda was making a courtesy visit to Hamada Port and was open to the public

Walking back along the waterfront road I stopped to take some photos of a couple of empty, traditional buildings.

An old gentleman in the garden next door asked me why I why taking photos of the abandoned buildings and I explained I enjoyed the ratios and composition of traditional architecture.

He asked if I would like to see inside, and we said yes, presuming he meant the empty buildings, but he took us into his home.

It was a very large, traditional house filled with typical architectural features and family heirlooms. Particularly impressive were the two, large kamidana.

In the courtyard with two large, stone sinks, Yoko remarked that it looked like a sake brewery, and the owner remarked that it used to be a soy brewery, the business that had made the family fortune. I am guessing the adjacent empty buildings were part of that business.

While walking through the area 2 years ago I noticed that many of the older houses in the area were gone, and the house we had been allowed to explore has been replaced with a large, modern two-storey affair.

The previous post in this series on Disappeared Japan was on the unusual sex museum in Ureshino.