Along the Shimoko River

 

2nd of May, 2014, and I begin day 8 of my walk along the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage from Arifuku, the small onsen resort in the mountains between Hamada and Gotsu.

The paddies are all flooded and will be planted with rice soon.

I stop in at a deserted, though not defunct, pottery.

Behind, some of the climbing kilns, anagama, no longer in use.

I think this may be the Yoshida Pottery, as they specialize in larger more utilitarian pieces, rather than the other potteries nearby which have modern showrooms and make more delicate pieces.

My route for a few days will be roughly SW, inland from the coast, down to where Iwami ends , then up the coast back towards my area of Gotsu.

After leaving the pottery I head over a pass and drop down into the Shimoko River valley and head upstream.

Heading upstream I start to pass numerous ruins of a "ghost railway", the Imafuku Line of a raiway that was planned to run over the mountains to Hiroshima.

It was started in 1933, then halted by the war, and never completed and opened.

Since I first moved here 20 years ago, they have started to turn it, somewhat successfully,  into a tourist attraction.

In Utsuicho I stop in at the local shrine, an Otoshi Shrine.

There are quite a lot of Otoshi shrines in Iwami. Otoshi was a son of Susanoo and is a kami of agriculture and rice.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage was on Fukusenji Temple in Arifuku.

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Suga Shrine & Tsukari Shrine in Autumn Splendour

 

The next shrine I visited on my walk along Route 63 on day 20 of my pilgrimage along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage.

The shrine was established in the early 11th century as a branch of the head Suga Shrine in Izumo.

As such it enshrines Susano and also one of his sons, Othoshi.

It was known as Ekisha, which ties in with what I learned earlier on the pilgrimage in Okayama where there were several Eki shrines to Susano.

Now the full name of the shrine is Ishiki Shrine, Tabi no miya, Suga Shrine, and it seems that in 1913 Ishiki Shrine was ranked as a Prefectural Shrine and this shrine became a branch of it. Not sure I understand.

What was clear was that there was plenty of Autumn colour at the shrine....

Omakuji left tied to a tree...

After leaving the shrine I passed was seemed to be some sort of small park, although there was no signboard and nothing marked on googlemaps...

The planting of trees and bushes was not by chance....

Then on to the next shrine, Tsukari Shrine.

This is a group of four different shrines which were grouped together.

In 1159, Oyamatsumi was enshrined in Awaya Shrine and moved to this location in 1620.

In 1181 Yamasue Shrine was founded with Sanno Gongen enshrined. Oyamatsumi, Oyamakui, and Wakamusubi. Sanno was the shrine that was based on Mount Hie.

In 1225 a branch of Kitano Tenmangu was established enshrining Sugawara Michizane.

Finally, in 1919 Ito Hirobume, the first Prime Minister of Japan was enshrined in Ito Shrine.

He was born in a village nearby.

As I headed off across country I spied an abandoned house with overgrown grounds.

It was a substantial house, not a farmhouse, but not nearly big enough to be a mansion

Lots of Autumn colour

And a substantial gate...

The garden must have quite delightful in its day...

The previous post was on some shrines and views from earlier in the day...

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Yokote Otoshi-gu

Located out in the rice paddies in Yokote, a village about halfway between Mount Futago and the coast on the east side of the Kunisaki Peninsula, this shrine was a little unusual

The first unusual thing was that there were no stone Nio guardians that are at most of the other shrines I had visited in the area. This might mean that the shrine was established later than when the area flourished as a Shugendo center and most of the shrines, temples,  and statuary were made, in the late Heian early kamakura period.

The other unusual thing for me was the kami enshrined here, Otoshi, one of Susano's sons that is associated with rice. I don't remember seeing another Otoshi shrine during the past 2 days here in Kunisaki. It would be interesting to now the story of the shrines founding.

There was unfortunately no signboard at the shrine nor anyone around, so I couldnt find out any more.