Daishoin Temple 81 Kyushu Pilgrimage

 

Daisho-in is located in the small Teramachi near Karatsu Station in downtown Karatsu.

These unusual statues are a complete mystery to me. The only reference I can find is that they are said to be in Korean-style. If anyone knows more please leave a comment.

The approach also has a nice pair of small komainu.

The honzon of the temple is a Fudo Myo. The Daishi statues in the main hall next to the fudo (top photo) was originally in Konpira Shrine on Shikoku and was moved here in 1885 after spending a couple of years at Zentsuji Temple in Shikoku.

The temple was originally called Daihoji and stood near Kishidake Castle. It burned down when the castle fell and was moved here in 1645 and renamed Daisho-in.

In the treasure hall, and only shown to the public once a year, is an 11-faced Kannon known as the Karatsu Kannon as it was originally enshrined in Karatsu Shrine. Originally claimed to have been carved by Gyoki, upon renovation it was discovered to have been made in the 14th century.

The temple is known for its Daikoku statue and is on a local Seven Lucky Gods circuit.

This was my last stop in Karatsu before heading up the coast towards Fukuoka. The previous post was on the oldest rice paddies in Japan.

Karatsu Shrine

 

Karatsu Shrine is the main shrine of the castle town of Karatsu on the coast of Saga in northern Kyushu.

It was moved to its current site in the first years of the 17th century when the Terazawa took over the domain and started construction of nearby Karatsu Castle, though its origins goes back much further.

In 755, a local notable, Kanda Munetsugu, had a dream which told him to go to the beach and he found a wooden box washed up there. Inside it was a mirror. He determined it was the mirror left on the beach as an offering by the mythical Empress Jingu when she returned from Korea.

The shrine was established with the three Sumiyoshi kami enshrined as well as Kanda Munetsugu who was given the name Kanda Daimyojin.

The shrine was known as Karatsu Daimyojin until early Meiji when the name was changed to Karatsu Shrine.

It is the home of Karatsu Kunchi, the main festival of the town held in the first week of November and which features giant floats.

There are a lot of smaller, secondary shrines within the grounds, including three different Inari Shrines: Shiratobi Inari, Hibushi Inari, and  Shiratama Inari.

 

There is a Kotobuki-sha that enshrines Sukunahiko, and an Awashima Shrine.

There is a largish Tenmangu Shrine, a Suitengu Shrine, and an Ebisu Shrine.

Next post in the series will be on the floats of the Karatsu Kunchi festival, on display in their own exhibition hall.

I visited at the start of day 73 of my walk along the Kyushu Pilgrimage. The previous post in the series was on Karatsu Castle.

A Walk in Rural Kochi

 

Late November, and on day 17 of my walk around Shikoku on the Ohenro pilgrimage I have left the Wakamiya Hachimangu shrine connected to the great Shikoku warlord Chosokabe Motochika and am heading across country to Tanemaji Temple 34.

This, for me, was the essence of the pilgrimage. The pilgrimage temples supply a structure and a route, but for me it is the space between the temples, the unknown expanses of mostly rural Japan that most visitors miss. I was seeking out the shrines and histories that don't make it into the tourist brochures.

I had been doing this for years, initially exploring the area around my home, gradually going further and further afield until I knew all the back roads and what could be found. I got into a pattern of studying maps and finding all the shrines and then working out a walking route that would take me to them all.

The impetus was to learn, to try to understand all the whys, why were things the way they were. To learn about the natural environment and its ecology and how that influenced the people, and to learn the political and religious history and how that shaped the place to be in the form it is now.

The Shikoku Ohenro was my first time on a "Buddhist" pilgrimage. I figured that dressed in pilgrims garb on a well established walking route I was less likely to be stopped by the cops, something that happened far too often to me and had a depressing effect on me.

The first photo is a small, local shrine, a Kamado Shrine. There were numerous kamado shrines in the area, indicating what I was not sure. The head shrine is in Dazaifu in northern Kyushu and was established after Japan's unsuccessful invasion of the Korean peninsula in the late 7th century.

photo 2 is a heron, a fairly common bird around rivers and rice paddies. Photo 3 is a small man-made pond, vital for irrigation for rice paddies before the modern world that nowadays uses a lot of electrical pumping.

 

Photo 4 is a small park of some kind, and photo 5 a gourd water bottle hanging on a farm outbuilding. A far cry from the ubiquitous plastic water bottles of now.

Phots 6, 7, and 8, are another small, local shrine, Mori Shrine. One of the things that fascinates me is the diversity of such things as the komainu guardian statues, which nowadays are tending more and more to a homogenous, "national" style, but which historically were quite varied.

photo 8 is the Kodono River I had to cross, and the finalthree photos are of an unusual memorial below a small local shrine. It seems to be dedicated to the ascension of Hirohito in 1926 when the era name changed from Taisho to Showa. Architecturally it is curious as it looks like some kind of tomb.

The previous post in this series looking at what is between the temples on the Ohenro was Wakamiya Hachimangu Shrine.

Nagaheta Konpira Shrine

 

Nagaheta is a village on the Kyuragi River in what is now Ochi Town in Karatsu, Saga.

The village shrine is a Konpira Shrine, one of more than 600 branch shrines nationwide of the famous Konpira Shrine in Shikoku.

Once a major cultic centre and pilgrimage destination, Konpira is known for safety at sea, and nowadays all travel.

With origins probably to the Indian deity Kumbira, Konpira was always a syncretic Buddhist-"shinto"; Yamabushi site, but in 1868 became purely "shinto" with the kami Omononushi, generally believed to be a manifestation of Okuninushi.

there was no signboard so I have no idea of the history of this branch, nor the secondary shrines in the grounds. However the unusual Komainu are said to be Hizen-style and similar to others I had seen in Saga.

I visited on the morning of my 72nd day walking around Kyushu. The previous post was on the early morning along the Matsuura River.

Kameyama Hachimangu Shrine Sasebo

 

Located on top of a small hill in what is now central Sasebo, Kameyama Hachimangu is by far the biggest and most important shrine in Sasebo.

The shrine claims to have been founded directly from Usa Hachiman Shrine in the late 7th century.

At that time it was a Kyushu cult and had not yet been adopted nationally, nor was it yet associated with the legendary emperor Ojin.

The Hachiman cult was adopted by the samurai and so assumed major importance in later Japanese history, so when Sasebo became a major naval port in the late 19th and  twentieth centuies the shrine was patronized by the local naval officers.

Like much of central Sasebo, the shrine was completely destroyed by bombing in 1945.

As a Hachman shrine the main kami are Ojin, his mother Jingu, and his father Chuai. Unusually Nintoku, his son, is also listed here. There are also numerous secondary shrines within the grounds.

In the modern, postwar ranking of shrines Kameyama Hachiman is listed as Beppyo, which means more important than a regular shrine.

I was exploring Sasebo at the end of day 71 of my Kyushu pilgrimage walk as I had been based in Sasebo for several days. The previous post was on Mimasakachinju Shrine.

Mimasakachinju Shrine

 

Mimasakachinju Shrine is just across the road from Toko-ji temple and is almost certainly the guardian shrine that was relocated from the temple at the start of the Meiji period.

It is usual for separated shrines and temples to be adjacent to each other, and the temple records refers to a "guardian" shrine, which is the name of the shrine.

Also, all the structures, komainu, etc have dates from late Meiji period, and finally, the original shrine temple complex enshrined Kurokami Gongen, and the kami enshrined here are the exact same as at Kurokami Shrine.

The kami listed are Amaterasu, Izanami, Hayatama, Okuninushi, Kotosaka, Takeuchi, and Sugawara Michizane. In 1907 during the national campaign to close local shrines, 5 shrines were moved here....a Daijingu, a Gongensha, a Myojinsha, a Kotoshirasha, and a Tenjinsha.

This was my last stop of the days pilgrimage and I headed back to Sasebo for the night one last time. The previous post was Toko-ji Temple.