Takada Kokuzo-do

The Sasaguri Pilgrimage, like the Kyushu Pilgrimage, does not have a lot of big, grand temples. It does have a lot of interesting and surprising one though. Most of the "temples" are too small to have a resident priest, and are more what could be described as "chapels. One thing they do all have though is statuary, especially Fudo Myo.

Temple 21, but the second to visit if you start at Sasaguri Sation, is just such a temple. With 88 temples within only 50k of walking, the distance between temples is often measured in meters rather than kilometers. Takada Kokuzo-do was onky 5 minutes from the previous temple and less than a minute to the next.

There was a Jizo in a little hut, and a couple of Fudo Myo's in the grounds. The Honzon is Kokuzo Bosatsu, not one of the more well-known Bodhisattvas.

It is however the deity that Kobo Daishi prayed to while training as a young man at Mount Tairyuji and Cape Muroto. In the small temple a statue of Kobo Daishi flanks the honzon

Shikoku88 Temple 12 Shosanji

The twelfth temple, Shosanji, is the first mountain temple of the pilgrimage and the first classified as difficult to reach. It is at almost 800 meters in a wonderful setting of giant cedars that on the day I was there were poking into the clouds.

Shosanji means "buirning mountain temple" and refers to the founding legend which has the famed ascetic En no Gyoja, credited with being the founder of Shugendo, subduing a fiery dragon on the mountain and then founding the temple in the late 7th Century. A hundred years later Kukai came to the mountain and did the same thing. The Kukai legend, not surprisingly, is more common nowadays.

The temple now belongs to the Shingon sect and the main deity is Kokuzo Bosatsu.

Kokuzo Bosatsu is a "wish granting" buddha and was very important to Kukai in the early stages of his path to enlightenment when he was chanting the morning star mantra. Kokuzo is associated with venus, the morning star, and dawn.

Shosanji is the second highest of the 88 temples, and for me at least the temple itself was overshadowed by the forest around it.....