More Ebisu on the Hita Kaido

 

A few days ago I posted 7 shots of Ebisu statues I found along the Hita Kaido while walking day 52 of my walk around Kyushu. There were A LOT of Ebisu staties. here are another seven. That was not all I saw in this one day, and if I had gone looking I am sure I would have found even more.

Usually depicted with a Sea Bream tucked under his left arm, ad a fishing rod in his right, this suggests that Ebisu was originally a fishing god, but by the Edo period, when these statues probably date, he was more well known as one of the Seven Lucky Gods.

Among the Seven Lucky Gods, Ebisu is singled out as being the only Japanese god of the seven. He is very often paired with Daikokuten. Originally a Hindu deity, Daikoku is written with the same Chinese characters as Okuni, so he became equated with Okuninushi. Okuninushi's son, Kotoshironushi, is featured in the ancient myths as always fishing, so the two became equated with Daikoku and Ebisu.

The Meiji government cemented this identification when they decided that the head shrine for Ebisu in Japan was to be Miho Jinja. Located in Mihonoseki at the tip of the Shimane peninsula, a site where Kotoshironushi enjoyed fishing.

In the Kansai region,  a different origin of Ebisu is given. In the origin myths, the first child born to Izanami and Izanagi was Hiruko, the "Leech Child". Born deformed, it was determined that this was caused by Izanami, the female, speaking first in their wedding ritual. They redid their wedding "correctly" and all future children were born OK. Hiruko was cast out in a boat and is believed to have landed on Awaji Island.

The characters for Hiruko can also be read as Ebisu. Ebisu is also an old name to refer to foreigners and in the north of Japan some stories suggest that Ebisu was a "foreign" god of the Emishi/Aimu.

Ebisu Along the Hita Kaido

 

Christmas Eve, 2013, and I begin the 52nd day of my walk along the Kyushu Pilgrimage. With totally clear skies I begin heading out of Kurume with everything still in shadow covered in white frost.

The route I will be following is eastwards up the Chikugo River on the south side towtds Hita in Oita. It was a major transportation route in the Edo Period sometimes called the Hita Kaido, sometimes the Bungo Kaido.

What became apparent after only a few kilometers of walking were the large number of Ebisu statues along the route.

Ebisu was primarily a kami connected with fishing and whaling. In many parts of the country every little fishing harbor will have a small Ebisu shrine.

In the Edo Period, with the rise in popularity of the Seven Lucky Gods, of which Ebisu is a member, he also became associated with business success.

Along this route I found Ebisu statues in every little shrine, on the sidewalk in the villages, and alongside the rice paddies.

I know that along the Nagasaki Kaido as it runs through what is now Saga there was a cult of Ebisu, and as the Nagasaki Kaido connects with the Hita Kaido, maybe this is an extension of that cult.

A Brief Guide to Kurume

I must admit I had never heard of Kurume and knew nothing about it when I visited in the latter stages of my first walk around Kyushu, however, I ended up spending a bit of time there as a base for several legs of the pilgrimage.

It is located on the banks of the Chikugo River which runs through the large Tsukushi Plain of northern Kyushu. It was a castle town, important I believe as a crossroads of several major transportation routes through Kyushu.

There seems to be little of the old left standing. Kurume did get bombed a little at the end of the war, but most destruction has been at the hands of construction companies and developers. The top photo shows a view looking down on Kurume from Kora Shrine, a mountaintop shrine that has an old approach,.

Not sure what the store in the second photo was selling, but the frontage impressed me.The third picture is a Science Museum, and the 4th is an Art Museum that had a fine garden in its grounds.

Near the Science Museum was another park that included a small Chinese-style garden. Other notable gardens include the riverside one featuring plum trees at the monastery of Bairinji, and Henshoin, a modern creation to honour a samurai political hero.

There were several more shrines in the town, and plenty more temples, but probably the main tourist attraction is a little outside the town. The Giant Kannon statue, one of the biggest in the world, is at a branch of the Naritasan Temple.

Nakano Park Kurume

 

Nakano ark in Kurume, Fukuoka, is home to the Kurume City Aer Museum, the Shojiro Ishibashi Memorial Museum, and the main library.

The area behind the Art Museum has a large pond with bridges and koi.

A large section is landscaped as a traditional Japanese garden and includes a small waterfall.

When I visited in mid-winter it was the most enjoyable of the gardens in Kurume,...

Though at other times of the year I suspect the garden at Bairinji Temple, and the nearby Henshoin Garden would be more attractive.

Henshoin Garden

 

At one end of Teramachi in Kurume is a largish garden called Henshoin. Henshoin still exists , but the garden is a modern creation built adjacent to the temple.

It is a stroll^type garden with a large pond with a bridge. It was designed and built in the 1960's. It also ahs a small tea room which had been brought from Kyoto.

The garden was built to memorialize an Edo-Period samurai called Takayama Hikokuro whose grave is here.

He is said to have influenced Yoshida Shoin, one of the architects of the Meiji Restoration, and was considered an example of an imperial loyalist in the patriotic education of the 1930's. There is a famous statue of him at sanjo bridge in Kyoto.

In the dead of winter when I visited  the garden was not so colourful but I suspect it looks better in spring and autumn.

Kurume Temple Town

 

Like most of the former castle towns of the Edo Period, Kurume in Fukuoka is home to a street named Teramach.

Teramachi literally means "temple town" and is/was a district of Buddhist temples occupying adjacent plots of land, now a street with nothing but temples on either side.

The Lords of the domains would have family temples that were not usually in the Teramachi, and some older temples continued to occupy their original sites.

Some of the temples in Teramachi were newly founded, and some were moved from other locations. Most of the different sects are usually represented.

There is rarely any significant temples in teramachi, and as they are located in what are now modern cities,  they are often rebuilt in concrete.

However, they sometimes have nice, though small, grounds, so here are a few shots from Teramachi in Kurume.

Kora Grand Shrine

Kora

According to the shrine records, Kora Taisha was founded in 400 AD. Over the centuries it rose in rank and by the 10th century was a high-ranking shrine and the Ichinomiya of the province.

Enshrined here are a triad of kami, the central being Kora Tamatare no Mikoto, in al probability a local kami. He is now known as being a kami of martial arts, and also performing arts as a local form of kagura is said to have originated here.

The other two primary kami are Hachiman, and the Sumiyoshi kami. Both of these are originally north Kyushu kami, but I suspect they were added here at Kora Taisha after they became national kami, abd that adding them played a part in the shrine being "promoted".

The main building of the shrine date back to the middle of the 17th century. It is in Gongen Zukuri style, which was a heavily Buddhist-influenced style of shrine architecture that places the 3 separate parts of the shrine, the Honden, Haiden, and Heiden, under one roof.

During the same rebuilding, numerous Buddhist structures were also built, including a 5 storey pagoda, but all these would have been removed when the Meiji government "separated. " the Buddhas and kami

Thre are numerous secondary shrines within the main shrine grounds, and I also discovered a pair of fertility stones. Many people drive up to the shrine for the fantastic views down onto Kurume and out over the Chikugo River Plain.

Earlier I posted on the rather impressive route up the mountain to the shrine.

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The Way To Kora Taisha

 

While studying maps to set my route as I walked from Kurume Naritasan and the Giant Kannon back to Kurume where I was based for several days I noticed a large mountaintop shrine and so decided on a route that would take me to it.

I must admit that I had never heard of Kora Taisha before. Taisha means Grand Shrine and so it is and was an important shrine. In fact it was the Ichinomiya for the province.

It was a huge temple-shrine complex that while centered on the main buildings near the top of the mountain, had numerous shrines and temples scattered around the base and on the route up to the main shrine.

It is now possible to drive all the way up to Kora Taisha, but I chose to take the stairway that was the original route. I don't particularly enjoy climbing, but it is the only way to get to the top.

There are several small shrines at special trees and rocks on the way up. At its peak more than 1,000 people lived and worked within the shrine, and that included more than 300 Buddhist monks.

Almost all of the Buddhist temples, structures, pagodas, etc that once were here have all been removed, though a couple of gates still remain.

There are also numerous Torii on the way up. The large stone torii at the bottom of the mountain was built in the 17th century, though the other along the way up are not that old.

Next post I will show you around the main shrine, which is said to be one of the largest in Kyushu. I will also delve a little more into the Buddhist legacy.

For those who drive up there is just one Torii to walk through from the parking lot. Coming up the original stairway is I think about 1.5 kilometers.