Hita Preservation District

Hita

Hita is a small town in Oita, close to the border with Fukuoka, and on the Mikuma River, which runs into the Chikugo River.

The old part of town is called Mamedamachi, and is a Preservation District with streets of old buildings from various times in the Edo Period.

Due in large part to its location in the middle of northern Kyushu, with well established roads and river transport routes radiating out to other parts of Kyushu, it was pretty much the political and economic capital of Kyushu for several hundred years.

First it was directly controlled by Hideyoshi, and then his successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Following him it was controlled by the Bakufu, and as such was known as a tenryo town.

Certain sections of the old town are very tourist-oriented with lots of gifts shops etc, though there are a few small museums and some temples.

I will be posting about various sites in the town over the next few weeks.

I was here on day 53 of my walk along the Kyushu Pilgrimage.

Koinobori

Christmas Morning at a Tenmangu Shrine

Xmas

Christmas Day, 2013, was the 53rd day of my walk around Kyushu on the Kyushu Pilgrimage.

I took an early morning train up the Chikugo River valley towards Hita to pick up the pilgrimage from where I had stopped the day before.

My first stop was a small Tenmangu Shrine. I'm not sure exactly which Tenmangu shrine it was as there are dozens of them in the area.

Dazaifu Tenmangu is a little to the north and it is the temple where Sugawara Michizane, deified as Tenjin, was buried, and so the cult spread throughout the region.

This particular shrine had been recently rebuilt and was sporting a fresh coat of vermillion paint.

There were also quite a few pairs of komainu lining the approach.

Best of all was that because of the strong, low, midwinter sun, the "golden hour" was still there several hours after dawn.

Koinobori

Suitengu Shrine Kurume

Kurume 久留米

Suitengu Shrine in Kurume is the head shrine of all Suitengu shrines in Japan. It was founded in the 13th Century and moved from various sites until its current location on the bank of the Chikugo River in Kurume.

It felt like a "national", political shrine and researching it has confirmed my feeling.

Suiten is a water deity, originally Varuna, a Hindu deity, and was imported into Japan with Buddhism. In 1868 all the deities in shrines that had a Buddhist origin, and there were very many, were replaced with Japanese kami that usually had imperial connections. All the very popular deities, Inari, Konpira, Myoken, Ebisu, etc were changed to imperially-connected kami.

Now enshrined here are Amenominakanushi, the kami who created the universe and who  is enshrined in hundreds of shrines but only since 1868, Next is Antoku, the child emperor who drowned at the Battle of Dannoura. Prior to 1868 emperors who not enshrined in "shinto" shrines. Emperors who died violently, like Antoku, were enshrined in Buddhist temples, many of which were "converted " to shrines after 1868. Also enshrined are Taira no Tokiko. wife of the famous Taira Kiyomori, and their daughter, Taira no Tokuko, the mother of Antoku.

A large part of the shrine is now devoted to Yasuomi Maki. He was a priest at the shrine, but also a samurai involved in the early stages of the civil wars that led to the Meiji Restoration. Pictured above is the Maki Shrine in the grounds.

In 1862 he was involved in an anti-government "disturbance" in Fushimi in Kyoto and was briefly held under house-arrest. Pictured above is a replica in the shrine grounds of the house he was held in.

Also known as Maki Izumi, in 1864 he took part in fighting in what is known as the Kinmon Incident when pro-imperial forces attempted to take control of the imperial palace in Kyoto. After suffering defeat Maki took his troops to Tennozan and committed suicide.

The grounds of the shrine are quite large and pleasant, with lots of trees, but like many of what I would call the political shrines, it is quite sombre and austere and not much sign of local peoples involvement.

The one exception is the pair of Hizen komainu, which are quite distinctive, and like many statues are used for prayers for healing by rubbing the part of the statues that corresponds to the su\ickness.

Koinobori

Taishi-ji Temple 5 on the Kyushu Pilgrimge

 

Taishi-ji was the only pilgrimage temple I visited on day 52 of my walk along said pilgrimage. It is numbered as 5, but the numbering system does not seem to correspond to any logic.

It is located in the small town of Tanushimaru, famous for its Kappa. The temple is small and was quite hard to find in the maze-like narrow lanes of the old part of town.

It is not an old temple, being founded in 1914 to commemorate the 1100 year anniversary of the establishment of Koyasan, the headquarters of the Shingon sect.

The honzon is a Fudo Myo, but I didn't go inside the main hall. There were several Fudo statues in the grounds though, including a quite large one.

There was also a small Jizo hall, and the temple is on the Kyushu Jizo Pilgrimage .

Miscellaneous Statues along the Hita Kaido

Statues along the Hita Kaido

One of the subjects I focus on finding as I walk the roads and lanes of Japan is sculptures. On my walk along the Hita Kaido, the old highway running East out of Kurume, I encountered a huge number of them  I've posted about the large number of Ebisu statues along the road. Ther were so may I did a second post. One town along the way had lots of Kappas, and of course, I recently posted a lot of Komainus.

This time I want to show you a selection of other statues from that day's walk that don't fit the other categories.

The top photo is of a small shrine that has a diverse collection of statues left by different parishioners over time. In this particular instance, all the statues are Buddhist, but very often they are a mix of Buddhist, Shi to, Daoist, secular, and occasionally, Christian statues.

Shrines tend to not have as many statues s temples. Earlier they would have had a lot of Buddhist staues but most were removed in the seperation of buddhas and kami. Other than komainu, I think the second most common category of shrine statues would be Zuijin. Usually nrightly ainted, but sometimes lain wood, Lafcadio Hearn says they were a shinto response to Buddhist Nio guardians, though many shrines had Nio, and in some places, like the Kunisaki Peninsula, they still do.

I have to admit I jave no idea who or what this pair represent......

You will sometimes find a white, wooden horse, usually inside a small structure. These derive, I thnk, from the ancient tradition of offering horses to shrines for rain, and probably, in my opinion, from an earlier time when animals were sacrificed. Some shrines have rather realistic, bronze statues of hotses, made in the modern period I believe. This stone horse was quite funky, and I am not sure of its purpose or meaning.

Finally, I came across this phallic statue. Once very widesread, now mostly extinct, though I do keep finding them, mostly in remote locations. Mostly fertility objects, but many were also for prayers to heal sexual ailments and diseases, and I recently came across a very popular shrine devoted to prayers for "sexual vigor".

Buy Japanese Crafts for your home or business

Ramune

A Gallery of Komainu from the Hita Kaido

 

The Hita Kaido, the old highway that ran from Kurume to Hita, is also called yamanobenomichi, literally the road that runs along the edge of the mountains.

If you look on mas you will see that these yamanobenomichi are where the majority of the shrines and temples are, at the base of the mountains. I try to take these roads as much as possible for this reason. 

I am trying to document such things as komainu becaise I see the diversity of such things is gradually being replaced with a monocultural, standard, style. New komainu being installed in shrines across the country are all of the one design.

Many of the komainu pictured here are rather chunky in style

All of them are the stone type, placed usually on the approach to the shrine, rather than the wooden, painted ones found inside.

I realize blogs are now an outdated format, and twitter, youtube, instagram etc are more popular, and also that my subjects are not of interest to a wide audience.....

A large part of my reasons for continuing is because I am trying to catalog my photo collection, so that I can quickly find photos bt subject and topic.

Every post has a collection of tags at the bottom, so for instance if you wanted to see more photos of komainu, you click on the komainu tag.

Clicking this link has the same result.

I appreciate you reading this far, and if you have any requests for specific topics or sites please ask and I may be able to oblige as I have more than 100,000 photos not yet posted.

Best wishes for the New Year

Kappa of Tanushimaru

Japan Guide

When I reached Tanushimaru along the Hita Kaido, another kind of statue, other than Ebisu,  started to appear, namely Kappa.....

One of the most well-known of the yokai, the kappa is usually translated into English as "water sprite" and is a creature that inhabits rivers, ponds, etc. Legends of kappa are found all over Japan. Nowadays it is often rendered in a "cute" form.

The kappa in the area are depicted in other ways as well as by statues. It is one of the towns that feature them on decorated manhole covers. Our local town also features a kappa, though it is called enko in our area. It is based on a legend from my village and one of these days I will get around to telling it to you.

Kappa throughout Japan have a similar form..... a turtle shell, a beak, webbed feet, and an indented skull with a fringe of hair. I suspect this homogeneity of form began in the Edo period when collections of yokai images were published and then later in the twentieth century at first with the work of folklorist Yanagita Kunio, and then later with the manga and anime works of artists such as Mizuki Shigeru.

I confess to not having done the work to research the actual kappa stories of Tanushimaru.

At the end of the days walk I took the train back to Kurume and was surprised to see the small station of Tanushimaru....