Sufu Kasuga Shrine & Hinoashi Hachimangu

 

Not far from Shotokuji temple and Jorinji Temple is a Kasuga Shrine with great views over Sufu and the mouth of the Sufu River.

There appear to be few existing records, but as Kasuga Shrine is the family shrine of the powerful Fujiwara family, and the local rulers claim descent from a branch of the Fujiwara family, that makes sense.

The Kasuga Daimyojin consists of Takemikazuchi, Amenokoyane, Futsunishi, and Himegami.

I was impressed with the older-style masks....

About a kilometers away near the mouth of the Sufu River, is Hinoashi Haxchimangu. This shrine does have records.

The governor of Iwami, Fujiwara no Kunikane, established the shrine as a branch of Usa hachimangu in 1114. Thirty years later the shrine was given extensive lands to support it and its festivals. It was the tutelary shrine for 16 villages. The Suo Clan, descendants of Kunikane, made it their family shrine and gave more support. When the Suo moved with the Mori to Nagato a lot of the shrines lands were confiscated.

There is a very popular Inari shrine within the grounds. Over the centuries it has been located at numerous locations.

The previous post in this series on walking the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage and the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage was on Jorinji Temple.

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Jorinji Temple & an Explanation

 

Jorinji Temple is a very small temple just a few hundred meters from Shotokuji Temple in Sufu. Jorinji is one of the "extra" temples on the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage.

Kannon pilgrimages usually have 33 main temples and 3 or so "extra" temples. The Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage has 33 main temples, but about 17 "extra" temples. I think I have figured out why.

I have seen a map of the original Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage, and a lot of the temples, especially in the western part of the pilgrimage, simply no longer exist, and I wondered how they came up with the current pilgrimage. During the Edo Period Iwami was split into two, with the Gonokawa River being the dividing line.

East of the Gonokawa was Iwami Ginzan, with all the land controlled directly by the Shogunate. West of the river was the Hamada Domain. Because of the wealth of the silver mine, travel into the area was severely curtailed, so pilgrims could no longer do the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage. Both Hamada Domain and Iwami Ginzan set up there own 33 temple Kannon pilgrimages, so Iwami ended up with about 70 different Kannon pilgrimage temples.

After Meiji, when the domains were abolished and Shimane was created, was when many temples disappeared, so I think the reason the contemporary Iwami kannon Pilgrimage has about 50 temples is because they used a combination of the what was left of the two Edo period pilgrimages. This is why it is called the Iwami Mandala Kannon Pilgrimage.

I visited on day 35 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage which was also day 16 of my walk along the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage. The Iwami Pilgrimage started in Oda and then went inland and followed the mountains all the way down to Tsuwano when it then heads to the coast at Masuda before heading up the coast to finish close to the starting point.

When I arrived in the Sufu area on day 35 of the Chugoku Pilgrimage, I had also gotten to about the same point walking the Iwami Pilgrimage. As the Chugoku Pilgrimage only has one temple in Iwami, rather than hurry on through, I decided to make small detours so I could finish off the Iwami pilgrimage at the same time.

So for the next 3 or so days of the Chugoku Pilgrimage I will be visiting many of the Iwami Pilgrimage temples.

Clear as mud, right?

The previous post was on nearby Shotokuji Temple.

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Tanoura Coast to Orii Coast

 

After the Tanoura Beach my route heads inland and then starts up towards another pass.

It's May so paddies are flooded and in some cases planted.....

Miniature farm machinery is one of the reasons rice is so expensive in Japan. Every farmer, who has a tiny farm , must buy machinery to plant and a different one to harvest. Each is used for just a couple of days a year. I my little village there is some sharing, but still Yanmar, Honda, etc are very profitable for a reason...

In many cases after the machine has planted humans must go in finish tings off....

A tiny narrow road over the pass..... I love these roads.... no traffic and wide enough....

Coming down into the tiny settlement of Imaura.....

Really, ormer settlement would be more accurate..... there was a couple of inhabited houses among the abandoned ones, but by now they too are abandoned.....

There is a substantial shrine, and a little harbour without any buildings....

The shrines name is Imoyama Shrine but I can find no sources on which kami are enshrined or any history.

It does have a kaguraden that is still in use, so I guess there are enough scattered farms in the surrounding mountains to support an annual matsuri.

There seems to be just a couple of small boats at the harbour, out of the water.

It is a popular spot for recreational fishermen ( and women)....

After climbing out from Imaura harbour I pass by the Orii Cliifs, top photo of this post. A little while later I look down on the Orii Coast and Mount Taima looms ahead.

Then I drop down to Orii Beach, well "protected" by lines of tetrapods. On the way down I pass another abandoned love hotel..... at Orii Station I hop on a train and head home.

The previous post was on the walk from Kamate to Tanoura...

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The Views from Hemp Mountain

At 599m, Taima-San (Hemp Mountain) is the highest coastal mountain in the Hamada area. Among the many antennae and towers that bristle from its peak is an observation tower

At the base of the mountain is the town of Sufu, home to the largest kofun (burial mound) in the Iwami area.

The Chugoku Nature Trail passes over Taima-san, and there is an interesting shrine and garden just below the peak which I covered in some earlier posts...

These photos were taken on two different visits.

The 1st, 9th, and 10th photos are of the Misumi Power Station. This is a big coal-fired plant that, since these photos were taken, has doubled in size. As a side note, for those of you that know me from a previous life, the original plan for the power plant was to import coal from Black Mesa in Arizona, but shifted to Australian and Chinese coal.

If you come up the mountain from Sufu on the Nature Trail, you pass right by the biggest kofun in all of Iwami.

Photos 6 and 7 are of Sufu. Photos 8 and 11 are of Hamada, further up the coast. The famous "bridge to nowhere" is clarly visible.

Photos 2, 3, and 12 are of views inland over the Iwami region.

The previous post was on Taimasan Shrine, the large shrine with gardens just below the peak.

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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....

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