Continuing to Descend Daisen

 

I awoke before sunrise on day 46 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage at a little over 630 meters' elevation on Mount Daisen.

With the early morning light, Mihonoseki, the eastern cape of the Shimane Peninsula is clearly visible across the water...

After descending a kilometer or so the stench of cow shit starts to dominate, and will do for most of the day.

Mount Daisen is famous for its milk, and either side of the road are dairy farms.

Factories would actually be a better word as there are no pastures with cows grazing, rather large wooden buildings, and metal for the more modern ones.

I am guessing that this dairy industry on Daisen grew out of the livestock market up at the temple...

Both sides of the roads are lined with fairly tall trees, so the dairy operations are invisible except when passing their entrances...

I come to Hoto Shrine, a place I had visited before, and that I was looking forward to revisiting. In this region, "hoto" is a slang word for vagina. Knowing that, the symbolism of the unique torii perhaps becomes more obvious.

However, just a few meters down the stone steps, the overgrown vegetation made it impossible to proceed. I also noted on Google Maps that there are no photos of the actual shrine, which suggests to me that since my first visit more than a decade before, the shrine has become impossible to visit. I have a fondness and interest in the remaining fertility shrines in Japan and seek them out. There used to be very many more until Japanese society took on a lot of Victorian Christian morals, but I have collected quite a lot of photos of such places.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful...just walking and enjoying the views and the dance of my own thoughts...

Going downhill I was able to make good time, though the route was very windy...

I reached Hagiwara Shrine....

The small honden was fully enclosed in a building, perhaps because we were still quite high and the winter weather would be inclement...

I can find absolutely no information about the shrine or its history..

After Hagiwara Shrine, I leave the main road and take a side road that will take me westward, and I start looking for a good spot to spend the night.

The previous post was on the first leg of my walk down the mountain.

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A Walk Down Mount Daisen

 

!5th October, 2015, at 3 in the afternoon, I started my walk down Mount Daisen.

I planned to get as far down as I could before sunset as I would be sleeping out and every meter lower I could get would be that little bit warmer.

The road I took headed roughly north down towards the Sea of Japan. In another 6 weeks, the road closes until March.

I looked down on Yonago and the long, curving spit of land that runs up to Sakaiminato. In the Kunibiki myth, this piece of land was a "rope" that attached the Shimane Peninsula to Mount Daisen. At the opposite end of the peninsula, it is held in place by a "rope" that is the long, curved beach that runs from Inasa Beach and connects to Mount Sanbe.

The road passes by several ski slopes....

Never ever been skiing myself, so have no idea if these slopes are any good.

At this elevation, it seems Autumn is about a month earlier than down where I live...

Not sure who this statue is. I suspect it may well be Sanbon Kojin, who had a shrine behind the Amida Hall at Daisenji. His hair stands straight up, but he usually has six arms. It also suggests this section of the road was one of the early pilgrimage trails radiating out in all directions from Daisenji.

The road has quite a few switchbacks so the view changes quite often...

After all these years living in Japan, I am still intrigued by the concrete "nets" that cover the mountainsides...

I find a good place to sleep beside the Amida River. I only managed to descend about 200 meters from 830m elevation to 630m elevation, but that translates to a much warmer night. There is some colour in the sky as the sun sets...

The previous post was on Daisenji Temple, the reason for my climb up the mountain.

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Daisen-ji Temple 29 Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

 

Daisenji was said to be founded in 718 when a man, while hunting a deer, came to the realization that killing was a sin and so became a monk and enshrined a statue of Jizo in a hermitage on the mountain. 

In 865 it became a Tendai sect temple and grew into a major shugendo site with 160 temples and 3,000 warrior monks.

Of course, in early Meiji when Shugendo was outlawed and the government decreed the separation of Buddhas and kami, followed by a campaign against Buddhism, everything changed and many structures were lost.

What is now the main hall was the Dainichi Hall, and the Jizo was moved there.

Higher up the mountain where the main temple once was, a lodging facility was turned into a Shinto shrine, the okunoin of Ogamiyama Shrine I stopped in at on the way up the mountain.

A development of the Jizo faith that developed out of Mount Daisen was for the protection of livestock.

This led to Daisen Gyuuba Ichi, the only livestock market with a religious twist. By the Edo Period it was one of the top 3 livestock markets in Japan, and in the Meiji Period it was the biggest.

The statue of the cow is said to have been made out of the nose-rings of cows.

Nearby is a Goma Hall with Fudo Myoo...

And near to that the Kannon Hall, the goal for this pilgrimage.

From here the path leads further up the mountain to the Niomon. Obviously this was the entrance to the main temple in earlier times.

From the Niomon, the path goes up to the shrine.

At 700 metres, it is the longest shrine approach in Japan.

During the opening of the mountain ceremonies each year, thousands of people carrying torches snake up the path, making an awesome sight.

It was getting late, and I wanted to get down the mountain a bit, as I was sleeping out that night and it would be warmer the lower I would be able to get, so I chose not to go all the way up to the shrine

The previous post was on the Amida Hall at this site...

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