Yakumo Fuketsu Wind Cave

 

If you ask a Japanese person if Japanese people eat pheasant, you will almost certainly get an emphatic "absolutely not". However, just outside Susa Shrine in the mountains of Izumo, there used to be a restaurant specializing in pheasant dishes. Modern Japanese have little knowledge of historical diets in Japan. If it walks, crawls, swims, or flies, then the Japanese people used to eat it. Quite like pheasant myself, but haven't eaten it in Japan, though I sometimes see and hear one in my garden and nearby rice paddies.

After leaving Susa Shrine, I head west further into the mountains towards the next pilgrimage temple on the Chugoku 33 Kannoin Pilgrimage.

I briefly visited Fukusenbo, a Jodo Shinshu temple.

I have no idea what the standing and horizontal carvings are about....

I do enjoy wooden statues that have weathered and eroded and reveal another aspect of their personality.....

Immediately adjacent to the temple was the reason for stopping, the title of todays blog post, the Yakumo Fuketsu Wind Cave.

In English, the term for such a geological feature is a blowing cave, and in essence it is a type of natural air-conditioning.

What happens is that in the winter cold air travels into the mountain through gaps in the rocks and this cools the rocks in the interior. In the summer air passing over the cold rocks escapes at places like here. If you descend two levels in the cave the temperature is 5 degrees celsius on the hottest summer day. Traditionally the spaces were used as cold storage for various crops, but now it is for tourists to cool off.

Even the exterior "caves" have a temperature noticeably cooler.

From here I headed deeper into the mountains.

Thatched houses and semi-abandoned shrines....the interior of Shimane....

The road keeps climbing and settlements disappear and only forest on either side of the road..

Eventually I cross a pass and start to descend.....

Isolated farmhouses start to appear and then settlements come into view...

This is the landscape of most of the land area of Japan...

It has been 4 days of walking since the last temple on this pilgrimage, Tada-ji in Hamada....

The previous post in this series on Day 40 of my Chugoku Pilgrimage walk was on the interesting Susa Shrine.

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Fukuyama Hachimangu

Fukuyama Hachimangu

Fukuyama Hachimangu lies north of the castle and is somewhat unusual in that it was until fairly recently two separate shrines with two approaches, torii, etc so double the amount of komainu and zuijin guardians.

I entered through the Eastern shrine and left through the Western one.

Nobuhiro Hachiman was the name of the eastern shrine and Nogami Hachiman the western one.

Though records no longer exist they are believed to have been in existence for some time before the Edo Period but were relocated to  the castle town when it was built in the early 16th century.

In 1683 they were moved to their current location.

The origin of the eastern shrine, Nobuhiro, was with the original Hachiman shrine in Usa, whereas the origin of the western shrine, Nogami, was enshrined from Tsurugaoka Hachiman.

Nobuhiro Hachiman was for the townspeople, whereas Nogami Hachiman was for the samurai.

When moved to the current site both shrines were of symetrical design with neither being more prominent. At this time it was called Ryosha hachiman Shrine.

In 1969 the two shrines became one and was renamed Fukuyama Hachiman Shrine.

In 1984 the new central worship hall was constructed.

Being a Hachiman, the primary kami is the mythical emperor Ojin, along with his mother the mythical Jingu. The third kami is usually given as Himegami, usually either his wife or daughter, but here it is quite different.

The "princess" element of the triad is listed as the three Munakata kami, Tagirihime, Ichikishima, and Tagitsuhime.

For me the highlight of the shrine are the two pairs of wooden komainu in the gates.

Please enjoy the rest of the photos.

The previous post was on Ushitora Shrine, immediately adjacent.

Goods From Japan

Art of Hashikuraji Temple

 

Hashikuraji is a mountain temple in the mountains that border Tokushima and Kagawa on Shikoku.

It was the "inner temple" of Konpira-san, once a major pilgrimage destination in its own right, and since Meiji Konpira became a shrine.

While not all temples have komainu guardian statues, Kashikuraji has quite a few. It also has several shinto torii gates. The top photo is the older type of komainu, wooden and kept indoors.

There are also plenty of carvings adorning the buildings at Hashikuraji. In fact when I was there I noticed free worksheets for kids available at the temple that encouraged kids to explore and find all the examples of animals, including mythical ones, at the temple.

Hashikuraji was a major centre for Shugendo and yamabushi and so has a pair of big wooden Tengu masks.

As is fairly typical, there was a pair, one of the long-nosed Tengu, and one of the Karasu Tengu with beak;

The honzon of the temple is a Konpira Daigongen, though it is a secret buddha and the last four generations of head priest have not even seen it.

There are a few statues scattered around the rounds though.

One of the newer ones is a Bokefuji Kannon. prayed to for protection from dementia and Alzeimers, this is a new version of Kannon that is becoming very common. Typically the standing Kannon will have a small, elderly couple at its feet.

There is a large outdoor altar to Fudo Myoo, and in fact this was what I had come here for, while walking the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage.

The previous post was on the temple buildings and the temples history.