Dogaku Temple 11 Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage

 

The gate at Dogaku-ji is quite unusual. Architecturally, it is, I believe, Chinese in style, but with a different style of roof that is not normally seen with this kind of gate.

Some people complain about the graffiti scratched into the walls, but some of it seems quite old and overall gives a kind of wabi-sabi patina....

Dogakuji turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise.

It is the second of the twenty "extra" temples on the Shikoku Ohenro pilgrimage, but when I walked that pilgrimage, it was too far off the main route for me to visit.

I visited it as the 11th temple on the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage, and my first stop was the cave-like structure housing the Fudo.

Often, Fudo is shown with two young boy attendants. In total, he has 36 of these attendants, and on this pilgrimage, each temple has a different one of the 36. Here at Dogakuji, it is Ratara Doji.

The Fudo is a Noten Fudo, said to offer protection against dementia and strokes.

The Seven Lucky Gods.

It is said the temple was founded by Gyoki.

There is a miniature Ohenro pilgrimage with all 88 of the honzon statues represented as well as then20 extra.

I believe that under each of the circles on the ground is sand brought from each temple as well.

Now this "hall" is filled with windchimes.

I visited on December 27th, 2016. A few months later the main hall was completely destroyed by fire,but I believe it has now been rebuilt.

The temple is famous for its wisteria, but in midwinter, were obviously dormant.

The temple is most famous for being where Kobo Daishi studied and trained as a young child.

He came back much later as an adult and enshrined various statues that he himself had carved, including the honzon, a Yakushi Nyorai.

It is a National Treasure and survived the recent bfire.

The spring was used by the child Kobo Daishi for water for his inkstone.

Behind the spring is a delightful garden I will post about next.

The main hall that burned down a few months after this photo was taken...

Several Mizuko Jizo line the approach.

Overall Dogakuji was a nice surprise and has many sights of interest.

The statue to the right of the steps is of Iroha Daishi, about the legend that Kobo Daishi composed the Iroha, a poem that is a kind of mnemonic for the Japanese syllabary, similar to the alphabet song in English. He is said to have composed it as a child here, but the statue shows an older Kobo. For many reasons, historians say the Iroha was composed several centuries after Kobo Daishi.

The previous post in this series on my walk around Shikoku on the Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the nearby temple 10, Tozenji.

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Utago Miho Shrine

 This small shrine goes overboard with marine-safety gods, has the most strangely looking Fudo Myoo, and proves that angry ghosts can be horses.

The main shrine in the old fishing harbour of Utago is a Miho Shrine on what was until the 1700's a small island named Ebisujima, but which was connected to the mainland by a man-made causeway.

As a branch of the famous Miho Shrine in Mihonoseki, the main kami is Kotoshironushi, now equated with Ebisu. Also enshrined are a whole slew of other kami with connections to maritime safety.

The Sumiyoshi Sanjin are enshrined here, the three kami associated with Sumiyoshi Shrine, and then there are Omononushi and Emperor Sutoku, the two kami of Konpira shrines, and finally Ichikishimahime, one of the three Munakata kami associated with the safety of travel between Japan and Korea, and alone often equated with Benzaiten, a water kami.

Standing at the side of the main shrine building is a very unusual statue of Fudo Myoo. No longer carrying a sword, it is carved out of some kind of eroded black rock. My feeling is a kind of volcanic rock but it is full of holes. The head in particular is most weird.

Behind the shrine in an altar among rocks is a horse made of straw. I had seen similar things before at shrines on the Tottori coast, but this one comes from a fire that badly damaged the village and in the process, killed a horse. Subsequently, fires kept breaking out until they figured out it was the angry ghost of the dead horse causing the fires and so created the straw horse and altar to propitiate it. Angry ghosts are never far away in Japan....

The previous post was on the village of Utago where the shrine is.

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Kisshoin Tamonji Temple

 

This temple in the mountains north of downtown Kobe was a real revelation.

The sign at the entrance to Tamonji Temple told me about something I had never heard of .... that for half a year the capital of Japan was not Kyoto, but Fukuharakyo, in what is now Kobe.

Taira Kiyomori moved the child emperor Antoku and set up court in Fukuharakyo in 1180. It was also Kiyomori's retirement palace.

At that time Tamonji was located at the bottom of Mount Rokko, across the valley from its current location. The okunoin of the temple is still on top of Rokko.

Kiyomori chose Tamonji to be the protector temple of the new capital from the dangerous spiritualforces of the NE, a so-called Kimon.

To support the temple, he settled people from the north of Kyoto; Yase, Ohara, etc around the temple.

Interestingly, the temple is said to have been founded in the mid 7th century by an Indian monk, Hodo Sennen, who is associated with many places and legends around Japan.

It fell into disrepair, or was abandoned, until being rebuilt as a Shingon temple in 858.

An unusual tiger statue. The honzon of Tamonji is Bishamonten, and in Japan, he is associated with tigers. For the story see this post from a temple in Kyushu...

 

A few of the simple, "cute" rakan statues...... a whole post on them coming up next post....

During the rebellion against the Taira, an army allied with Yoshitsune Minamoto burned down the temple as they would not assist in their approach to fight the Taira.

In 1428 a bright light was seen emanating from the spot where Tamonji currently stands, and taken as an omen, Tamonji was moved here and rebuilt.

The current main hall dates to 1690.

The Mizuko Jizo seem to have been made by the same people who made many of the rakan here.

The honzons at Tamonji are the Bishamonten, a Kichijoten, and a standing Jizo. They are all secret buddhas, but it is possible that once a year they can be viewed.

One source says that in 1868 2 other temples in the area were combined with Tamonji.

Theer are several shrines within the grounds including an Atago Daigongen, a Hachiman, and an Aizen Inari.

In the structure pictured below used to be a sacred spring of some kind, though it is now dry.

Behind it a Fudo Myoo...

Since moving to this site thetemple seems to have been associated with shugendo, with the head family of the area said to have moved here from the Yoshino area.

Located just a few minutes from Shintetsurokko Station, the temple is not well known but well worth a visit, especially for the rakan which I will post on next....

I was also taken with the unique Onigawara featured in the last photos of this post.

I visited at the start of day 5 of my walk along the Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage. The previous post in the series was on the delightful Mudoji Temple, not too far away, that I visited the day before.

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.