Tanoura Kannondo Temple 80 & Tanoura Yakushido Temple 59 Sasaguri Pilgrimage

 

A striking feature of temple 80, Tanoura Kannondo, is the Seigando Hall with around 300 small statues of a seated Kobo Daishi.

Temple 80, Tanoura Kannondo, and temple 59 Tanoura Yakushido, are located adjacent to each other.

Unfortunately there is very little in terms of dates and history.

As usual there are lots of Fudo Myoo statues as well as others....

The "main hall" is a small cave that was a sutra repository about 300 years ago.

The honzon is a Thousand-armed Kannon. There are numerous other Kannon statues at the temple.

There is one particularly fine, huge sugi tree.

A Benzaiten statue next to yet another Kannon statue....

Nest door is the Yakushi-do, temple 59....

A statue of Fujiki Tosukethe founder of the Sasaguri Pilgrimage. It is believed his hermitage was located near here.

There are also many Fudo statues here...

The honzon is a Yakushi Nyorai, commonly known as the Medicine Buddha.

The statue of Kobo Daishi with his dog relates to a legend that while travelling with his dog they were attacked by a wild boar and the dog dies defending Kobo Daishi.

I have not come across this story anywhere else so it may be a local story...

The previous post was on the nearby temple 30, Higyokudo.

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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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Mudo-ji Temple 10 Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage

 

After emerging from the forested mountain I come into what is in essence a suburb of Kobe, albeit in a valley separated from Kobe by Rokko Mountain. I cross the Yamada valley to the northern side and find the entrance to Mudo-ji, the tenth temple on the Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage.

The long approach is lined with statues representing the 88 Shikoku Pilgrimage temples.

Mossy steps lead up to the compact temple grounds with a bell tower, an elegant main hall, and an imposing, thatched residence.

The origins of Mudo-ji date back to the end of the 6th century, the very early days of Buddhism in Japan, and to the semi-legendary Prince Shotoku Taishi.

Along with his Soga Clan relatives, Shotoku Taishi was in conflict with the Mononobe Clan, and he asked a sculptor to carve a series of statues of Dainichi Nyorai and other Buddhist deities. Upon the defeat of the Mononobe he ordered the construction of seven halls to house the statues and this became Fukuji Temple.

The temple went through numerous changes and by the mid 18th century was in a dilapidated state. A twenty year fundraising campaign led to it being rebuilt in 1752. The main hall and priests' quarters date to that time.

There was a private ceremony going on when I was there so I was not able to enter the main hall, which is a real shame as I found out later that the Treasure House, entered through the main hall, houses 5 Important Cultural Properties.

The 5 ancient statues are a 3-meter-tall statue of Dainichi, the honzon of the temple, a seated Shaka Nyorai, believed to be the oldest of the statues, a seated Amida, a seated Fudo Myoo, and a standing 11-headed Kannon. They are all believed to have been carved in the mid-Heian Period.

There was a small, seemingly fairly new, Goma Hall in which I found a Fudo....

I wish I had been able to see the one in the Treasure Hall...

Immediately adjacent to the temple, and once its guardian shrine, is Wakaoji Shrine, another Important Cultural Property.

It was established in 1297, the current shrine , within its protective outer structure, dates to 1408.

It enshrined Wakaoji Gongen, the mountain guardian of the temple.

In the late 19th century, when the shrine was separated from the temple, the main kami changed to Izanagi.

Mudo-ji is now a Shingon sect temple.

As well as the Kinki Fudo Myoo, the temple is on several other pilgrimages; it's number 12 on the Kobe 13 Buddhas  Pilgrimage, and number 9 on the Settsu Kannon Pilgrimage.

The previous post in this series on day four of my walk along the Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on Shiogahara Pond in the mountains nearby...

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.