Takahara Kumano Shrine

Takahara Kumano Shrine

Takahara is a mountaintop village located on the Nakahechi route of the Kumano Kodo ilgrimage.

The village shrine, a branch of Kumano Hongu, is situated in a grove of ancient trees.

As I understand it, the village was not directly on the pilgrimage route until the route was changed in the Edo period and it became an important way-point.

The shrine was established earlier, in 1403, making it one of the oldest shrines in the area.

It is a very colorful shrine with a lot of paintings and color dating back to the Muromachi period.

The main buildings is built in what is known as Kasuga-style, and has a roof of cypress bark.

I believe this section of the Kumano Kodo is by far the most popular, especially among thos only walking a day or two. I visited towards the end of my 4th day of the Saigoku pilgrimage.

Ushiki Tenmangu

 

Ushiki is a small farming village on the bank of the Koishiwara River that runs from the mountains to the NE down to the Chikugo River. On the opposite bank is the town of Amagi where I had just visited Kotokuin Temple.

Walking west towards the next temple, Nyoirinji, the "Frog Temple", as was my habit I stopped in at any shrines I passed.

Most people would walk right past such a small, local shrine, but I was always on the lookout for interesting and unique artwork like carvings or statues, but also because such shrines have connections to local and national history.

There was nothing unusual in the art of this shrine, but its history throws some light onto a little known aspect of fairly recent "religious" history. This is now a Tenmangu,  enshrining Sugawara Michizane, a national shrine with many bramches, especially in this area. However, local records list it as a Ta shrine, with a couple of obscure kami.

The shrine has a large ancient tree with a couple of small shrines at its base. Interestingly the shintai, the object within the shrine that is inhabited by the kami when it descends, is arge stone. Most sources nowadays stress that shintai are mostly mirrors, though that is very much a modern creation of modern state shinto. Many shintai used to be Buddhist statues, and many small, local shrines, like here, used a stone. The mirror was linked with Amaterasu, the Imperial ancestor who is nowadays said to be central to shinto.

I suspect that this was the original shrine. In the early 20th century the government initiated a program of shrine closures which resulted in half of the shrines in Japan being closed. These were all local, often nature-based shrines with sacred trees. The trees were cut down and sold as lumber and locals were forced to worship at a national shrine.

One way some communities resisted this program was by very quickly enshrining a national kami in the shrine and therefore spared the destruction of the sacred tree. There are examples of this in my own area.

Ogori Hiyoshi Shrine

Ogori Hiyoshi Jinja

Monkeys are the messengers of Hiyoshi shrines, so its not surprising that at the Ogori Hiyoshi Shrine in Ogori, Fukuoka,  there are monkey statues around the grounds.

It is one of almost 4,000 branches around Japan of Hiyoshi Taisha located at the base of Mount Hiei in Shiga.

Before the Meiji period many of the Hiyoshi shrines were called Hie Shrine or Sanno Shrine, as the shrine was based on the Sanno cult, or Mountain King.

The cult was a kami cult based on Tendai Buddhism and the main kami was Oyamakui, and when the imperial court moved to the area temporarily in the late 7th century (in fear of attacks from Korea), Okuninushi was added, though as the area was earlier settled by Korean immigrants there was certainly Korean "kami" in the mix also.

The main building of the Ogori Hiyoshi Shrine had some really nice carvings.

The shrine seemed to be quite popular which usually indicates "this worldly benefits" and several of the monkey statues had babies. There was also a tall tree that had split into two trunks, commonly a symbol of marriage.

There was also a set of statues of the # Wise Monkeys, and while they are not purely of Sanno Shinto origin, several of the strands that make up their origin in Japan have strong Tendai connections.

Kakurega no Mori the 8th largest tree in Japan

 

Some of the biggest trees I have encountered while walking around Western Japan have been Camphor trees, Cinnamomum camphora, kusunoki in Japanese.

This example is found near the Chikugo River in Asakura, Fukuoka, and is named Kakurega no mori, which means "hideaway forest" and is believed to refer to the wooded area that stood here in earlier times when it was a barrier or checkpoint and people hid in the forest until nightfall when they could then slip through unnoticed.

It is said to be 1500 years old, though the ages of giant trees are very often exaggerated. It is registered as the 8th largest tree in Japan.

At chest height, the trunk has a circumference of 18 meters, at ground level the roots measure 34 meters in circumference, and it is 21 meters high, though before being damaged by  a typhoon in 1991 it was said to be somewhat taller

Meiseki-ji Temple 43 Shikoku Pilgrimage

 

Located on a hillside in Seiyo, southern Ehime Prefecture, Meiseki-ji is a pleasant enough temple complex, but strangely unmemorable.

While many of the pilgrimage temples claim Kobo Daishi as their founder in the 9th century, quite a few are attributed to Gyoki a century or more earlier. but Meiseki claims to have been founded in the 6th century.

Since then it has gone through numerous destructions and rebuilding. The current buildings mostly date from late Meiji P

eriod.

There is a nice pair of large sugi trees linked with a shimenawa named as "Married Sugi", but otherwise very little in the way of statuary.

The temple belongs to the Tendai sect and the honzon is a senju Kannon.

The Great Camphor Tree at Horakuji Temple

 

In the grounds of Horakuji Temple is a huge, ancient kusunoki tree. Estimated to be about 800 years old, it is officially the second oldest tree in Osaka, one in Sumiyoshi Taisha shrine being older.

Its dimensions are impressive. 26 meters tall and a similar size for the spread. The circumference of the trunk is 8 meters. It is said the tree can be seen from 8 kilometer away.

On one side at its base is a small Inari shrine with a few small vermillion torii leading to it. On the trunk, above a shimenawa is a Tengu mask.

Also at its base is an altar to Fudo Myo, 

When a Tree is a Shrine. Oyama Shrine on Dogo

That a natural phenomenon or an object like a mountain, a rock, a spring, or waterfall could be sacred  or home to something sacred is not at all uniquely Japanese, but a fairly universal occurance. However such things are commonly found throughout Japan. This is Oyama Shrine in the mountains of Dogo, the largest of the Oki Islands that are part of Shimane.

There is a torii and a couple of lanterns, but no buildings. The shrine is a giant tree. It is a sugi, commonly called Japanese Cedar but it is not actually a cedar. It is estimated to be over 800 years old.

In April villagers from Fuso, a fishing village on the coast at the base of the mountains, come here with a long vine and wrap it around the base of the tree seven and a half times. I am unsure if there is a significance to that number. Ritual objects that carry prayers and requests are then inserted into the wrapped vine.

There are quite a few sacred trees on Dogo, a nearby one being the Chichi Sugi. Being remote and isolated the Oki Islands have kept a lot of traditions.

To get a sense of the size of the tree you could see the cover photo on my facebook page

Chichi Sugi... the Boob Cedar

Chichi Sugi, which translates as Boob Cedar is an 800 year old tree on the slopes of Mount Daimanji on Dogo, the biggest of the Oki Islands.

It is an Urasugi, a species that grows on the Japan Sea coast where heavy snowfall causes the trees to produce stronger lateral branches. The rounded protuberances growing down from the branches... which is the origin of its nickname "boob", are believed to help absorb moisture from the air.

Cold air rising from the gaps between the big rocks that form the slope meet warm air from the sea and mean that the area is often misty.

It is one of several sacred trees on the island that are well worth seeking out.