Kantele Ogimachi Square Osaka

 

Originally called Ogimachi Kids Park, this modern building adjacent to Ogimachi Park in Kita Ward, Osaka, is quite distinctive.

Kantele is the nickname of Kansai Telecasting, a local TV station and broadcaster with sudios and offices in the building.

It is also called Kids Plaza after a large childrens science museum inside.

It opened in 1997 and was designed by Yasui Architects & Engineers Inc, not a household name, but designers of hundreds of major buildings in Japan and elsewhere.

I passed by while on my second day of walking the Kinki Fudo Myo Pilgrimage.

The previous post in the series is on the nearby Settsu Kokubunji Temple

Taiyuji Temple 6 Kinki Fudo Myo Pilgrimage

 

Taiyuji Temple, number 6 on the Kinki Fudo Myo Pilgrimage, is a large complex in downtown Umeda close to Osaka Station.

It is said to have been founded in 821 by Kobo Daishi himself with Emperor Saga donating a statue of Senju Kannon which is now the honzon. The temple was burned to the ground during the Siege of Osaka in 1615 and then once again at the end of WWII. Most of the current buildings date to 1986.

There are numerous statues and shrines scattered throughout the grounds. It is said that in the Meiji period, the  Freedom & Political Rights Movement was established here before spreading around the country.

The Okunoin of the temple is a small cave enshrining a Fudo Myo statue.

The much larger Fudo housed in the Ichigando is the focus of the Fudo Pilgrimage

A statue of young Kobo Daishi. The Kuzan Hakkai Garden is a rock and gravel garden with unusual stepping stones covering 200 tsubo.

I was visiting on the second day of my walk along the Kinki Fudo Myo pilgrimage. The previous post in this series is the nearby Osaka Tenmangu Shrine.

Osaka Tenmangu

Osaka Tenmangu

Osaka Tenmangu is a large, quiet, shrine in the middle of downtown Osaka that is the origin of Osak's biggest matsuri, the Tenjin matsuri.

There are countless thousands of wooden ema strung up around the main buildings, the vast majority containing prayers for success in exams, as this is a Tenmangu shrine, enshrining Sugawara Michizane, considered to be the patron of scholarship.

The origin of the shrine comes from when Sugawara Michizane stopped at Daishogunsha Shrine on his journey to "exile" in Dazaifu. That shrine now exists as a sub-shrine in the grounds today.

A small pond in the grounds is home to some Japanese pond  turtles,.... something I think is more common at shrines than at temples....

The shrine buildings have been destroyed many times by fire, but surprisingly the main hall anf gate survived the destruction of WWII and date back to the mid 19th century.

There are a lot of secondary shrines within the large grounds, including the obligatory Inari Shrine.

This was my second day walking the Kinki Fudo Myo pilgrimage and was heading to the next temple after having visited  Houoninji.

Kozugu Shrine

Japan Shrines

Osaka is rarely seen as a major tourist destination, especially compare with it nearby neighbour, Kyoto, but actually, Osaka is a more historic city except that it was completely flattened during WWII and the subsequent postwar development, whereas Kyoto escaped the war completely.

Kozu Shrine was originally founded just a few years after Kyoto was established as the new capital. Emperor Seiwa established the shrine at what was believed to be the site of the palace lived in by Emperor Nintoku who is the kami enshrined here.

There is almost no verifiable history about Nintoku although the largest keyhole tomb in all of Japan is said to be his. He was a son of Ojin who was apparently a new lineage of "emperors" around the 4th or 5th centuries and who were based in what is now the Osaka area.

The shrine was moved to its current location from its original by Hideyoshi in the late 16th century when he was building Osaka Castle.

There is a large Inari shrine within the grounds that is very popular, and the shrine is known for its rakugo performances.

It is located just across from the small Houonin Temple that I visited on my second day of walking along the Kinki Fudo Myo pilgrimage.

The Shitennoji and Tennoji areas of Osaka that I had been walking through have a surprisingly large number of historic shrines and temples, though they are all modern rebuildings.

Ramune

Houonin Temple 5 Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage

Houonin Temple

Houoninji was founded in the late 17th century with tee erection of the Kitamukizanfudoson, the North-Facing Fudo.

Located in central Osaka, not far from Ikutama Shrine, it is temple number 5 on the Kinki Fudo Myoo pilgrimage and I visited on the second day of my walk along that pilgrimage.

The statue stands against a camphor tree that was planted at the same time, and when the temple buildings were burned to the ground in WWII, only the tree and statue survived.

On the other side of the tree is now a "south-facing Fudo", though I can nt discover when this dates from.

It is a very compact, urban temple with only a few small buildings, but in one was another Fudo statue.

 

There was also this statue of who I am fairly certain is En no Gyoja, the legendary founder of Shugendo

Ema

Green Tea

Ikutama Shrine

Ikutama Shrine

Ikutama is the common name for Ikukunitama Shrine, a very large shrine in Tennoji, Osaka, that I had not heard of but visited at the start of my second day walking the Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage. According to legend, it was founded by the mythical first emperor Jimmu.

Ikutama Shrine has multiple sub-shrines within its grounds, including Inari, Tenmangu, Sumiyoshi, etc. This is Seichinsha, renamed from Benzaitensha in early Meiji. The shrine was located in a lotus pond but was moved to Ikutama Shairne when the pond was swallowed up by the construction of the subway. The large glass cover is over a small stream.

Shigino Shrine is another of the more well-known sub-shrines in the grounds. It is said that Hideyoshi's wife was a regular visitor. The symbol on the lanterns and ema is a lock with the florid kanji for "heart" and is said to be a good lace to ray for "connection", though it seems it may have been more concerned with breaking bad connections.

Apologies for adding a photo of a cat to the WWW..... Ikutama Shrine was moved to its current location by Hideyoshi. It was originally located closer to where Osaka Castle now stands and Hideyoshi had the shrine moved while building Osaka Castle.

The two main kami enshrined in Ikutama Shrine are Ukushimanokami and Tarushimanokami, neither of which aear in the ancient chronicles, and seemingly only one other shrine in Nagano enshrnes them.

A statue of Osak writer Sakunosuke Oda. I have never herd of him but the statue had to be a writer as he is wearing the "uniform" of one. Ikutama Shrine is also home to a Hikohachi Festival celebrating Yonezawa Hikohachi who is said to have created the Rakugo style of comedy here at the shrine.

An unusal set of direction signs pointing to the various "attractions" in the grounds of Ikutama Shrine.

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Shinsekai

新世界

Shinsekai is the entertainment district around the Tsutenkaku Tower in the south of Osaka City,

On the right of the photo above you can see one of the icons of Shinsekai, a character called Billiken, a good-luck figure whose history dates back to when he was enshrined in the area back in 1912. He is the creation of American artist Florence Pretz.

It is claimed that the northern part of Shinsekai is modelled on Paris and the southern part on Coney Island in New York

The area was once considered quite seedy but recently has been a little gentrified by the development of nearby Abeno Harukas and the homless residents are less in evidence, though not invisible.

I was here because there are plenty of very cheap hotels in the area that seem particularly popular with Asian tourists on a budget. There are plenty of retro pachinko parlors and arcades, and the local specialty is Kushikatsu, deep-fried skewers of battered meats and vegetables.

I visited at the end of my first day walking the Kinki Fudo Myo Pilgrimage which I started at Shitennoji Temple, one of the oldest temples in all of Japan with a little-known garden, I had visited a further three temples of the pilgrimage, number 2, Kiyomizudera, a small but very old temple, number 3, Horakuji Temple which was quite a surprise with its massive tree and with plenty of art, and temple 4, Kyozenji Temple.

There had been other sights other than the pilgrimage temples.  An annex of Isshinji Temple was very surprising, as was Aizendo Shomanin Temple. The most interesting shrine of the day was Yasui Shrine enshrining the samurai Sanada Yukimura.

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