Koizu Inari Shrine & Sansha Shrine

 

At Koizu fishing port I headed over to see what seafood was being dried in the baskets, only to discover it was nets.

Koizu is, I think, the biggest port and fishing village so far along the Shimane Peninsula..

The road switchbacks up and out of the village. This is mostly a steep coastline.

I come to the familiar vermilion toriis of an Inari Shrine....

The shrine itself consists of just a honden..... bigger than in a roadside shrine, but smaller than a main shrine.

There does seem to be a kind of meeting hall though....

The 2d white fox on one of the torii is interesting.... don't remember seeing that anywhere else...

A little further up the road is the entrance to Sansha Shrine. The two shrines are adjacent so the Inari shrine may officially be a sub-shrine of Sansha....

I can find no information about the shrines history...

The Sansha Shrine is a little more substantial.

It is believed that this is the Suijin Shrine listed in the Izumo Fudoki. Later it became known as Sansha Daimyojin.

The main kami are the three Sumiyoshi kami, Uwatsutsu, Nakatsutsu, and Sokotsutsu.

This secondary shrine is an Umisachi Shrine.

These sub-shrines are Toshitokujin, and then a Miho Shrine with a Kinoyama Shrine...

The previous post was on the washboard rock coastline leading into Koizu.

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Tenei Hachimangu

 

3rd of May, 2014, and my final stop of day 9 of my walk along the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage was a fairly standard village shrine in Mito Onsen, in the Chugoku Mountains near Masuda.

There was no signboard, and I have been unable to unearth any information searching the web.

Plenty of small shrines within the grounds, almost certainly moved there in the early 20th century when local shrines were moved to national shrines.

Stone zuijin are not si common, and this one is quite recent.

As with most village shrines in Iwami, it is set up for annual kagura performaces...

Also unusual were the wooden masks, I suspect there is a mask-carver in the neighbourhood

The previous post in this series was on the day's walk through the remote mountains with an emphasis on wild harvesting...

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Kosenji Temple number 42 on the Kyushu Pilgrimage

Hachimanyama Kosenji Temple is at the eastern end of the Ebino Valley in the higjlands around the Kirishima Montains in Miyazaki. It is number 42 on the 108 Shingon temple pilgrimage on Kyushu.

It is a fairly modern temple founded in the early Taisho era, so is about 100 years old. I'm no expert, but it seems that the Gingko trees were a little older than that.

It has an unusual hnzon, a statue of Dainchi riding a cow, though I didn't get to see it. Also unusual for the Kyushu pilgrimage is an actual Daishi-do.

There was quite a bit of interesting statuary which I will post on later, and also one building had quite a few masks on display, severa; of which were from the Iwami Kagura tradition.

Tengu Masks in the Kirishima Mask Museum

Kirishima Mask Museum

The mask museum in Kirishima was called "Tengu-kan", and obviously there were a lot of masks of tengu on display. Most of which were the red-faced long nose variety.

Probably the earlier version of Tengu was more birdlike in appearance, like the one in the top center of the photo below. The long nosed version is probably derived from Sarutahiko, the earthy kami who helped lead Ninigi and his entourage from the High Plain of Heaven. he later married Uzume and a mask of Sarutahiko and Uzume are often found together at shrines, often linked to fertility.

Tengu are often connected to Yamabushi, the mysterious mountain monks who practised austerities and magic in the remote sacred mountains. A distinguishing feature is the tokin, the small black headgear worn on the top of the forehead. It is said this was to protect the head while walking through the forest. It was also used as a drinking vessel.

The museum is located near the entrance to Kirishima Jingu Shrine up in the mountains of northern Kagoshima and if you are visiting the area and like masks then is a must see.

Buy Handmade Masks From Japan

Kirishima Mask Museum

Being a mask maker myself, I have a great interest in masks and am always on the lookout for them on my walks. Ive visited a few small mask museums, ut the absolute best was in Kirishima.

Located close to the entrance to Kirishima Jingu Shrine up in the mountains of Kagoshima, it called itself Kirishima Tengu-kan, and there were plenty of tengu masks on display, but there were also hundreds and hundreds of other masks from all over Japan.

There were Noh masks, Kagura masks, new masks, old masks, and I even found some examples of my local Iwami Kagura masks. Apparently, it was the private collection of a local man.

Most of the masks were Japanese, but there were also collections from Africa and Asia. A delightful surprise and not a well known place, well worth stopping by if you are in the area.

Buy Handmade Masks From Japan

Uzume Mask

Uzume Mask

It has been a very long time since I finished any masks, but the last few weeks I have been hard at it. Most of my older blog posts that featured my masks no longer have photos as they were stored on a site I no longer use, so overthe next weeks I will be posting photos of my new masks.

This one is one of the smallest and is the kami Uzume, the female whose dance in front of the cave was instrumental in luring Amaterasu out. The dance is credited with being the mythological origin of kagura.

The Masks at Nobusatohachimangu Shrine

The Masks at Nobusatohachimangu Shrine

Towards the end of my second day walking the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage I was coming into the outskirts of Oda City and stopped in at the Hachimangu Shrine in Nobusato village.

One thing I am always on the lookout for at shrines are masks, and, like many village shrines in rural Japan, this one was not locked so I could go in and look around and found quite a few masks. The mask in the first photo was nice, but not unusual. The second was an unusual style that I had seen several times in the past few days and is specific to this area.

The next one was a standard Tengu mask done in Iwami kagura style, almost exactly like ones I myself have made, but the next one was back to the local style and is, I believe, a karasu tengu.

The final pair were in standar Iwami kagura style and were the old married couple, the mother and father of Kushinada Hime, the maiden rescued from the serpent Yamata Orochi by Susano.

More Shrine Masks

Continuing with some photos of masks I found in shrines while walking along the Iwami coast this past spring. In a small shrine in a remote fishing cove near Orii were this pair of Ebisu and Daikoku, 2 of the 7 Lucky Gods, and often paired together.

At the Kasuga Shrine in Sufu was this pairing of, I think, Shoki and Oni. These are much older, wooden masks.

At the Itsukushima Shrine in Matsubara another Ebisu-Daikoku pair. They look as if they may have been made out of plaster. I have a small pair made out of plaster at home.

At Ikan Shrine in Shimokou, a demon mask with some variations that I hadnt seen before leading me to believe it is from a mask maker I have not encountered before. The use of curved fangs is unusual and something I had been thinking of incorporating into my own masks.

Finally, at the Hekireki Shrine next to the site of the former Kokubunji, yet another Ebisu- Daikoku pair