Shoyoen Garden at Dogakuji Temple

 

Dogakuji Temple in Tokushima on Shikoku is the temple where Kobo Daishi studied as a young child. It is the 2nd of the 20 extra temples on the famous Shikoku Ohenro Pilgrimage, but also the 11th temple of the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage, which is why I visited it.

Behind the main buildings is a small pond garden named Shoyoen.

It is thought to have been built in the late Muromachi Period, the mid to late 16th century.

It features a lot of rock, native Awa Bluestone.

Some of the rock is not brought in and positioned, but original to the site.

Noticeable are the bridges, each composed of a single, very thin slab of stone.

It is said that the great 20th century garden designer and scholar Mori Shigemori liked his garden and spent a lot of time here....

The final three photos are from a small garden between two of the buildings.

The previous post was a large one on Dogakuji Temple itself.

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Dogaku Temple 11 Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage

 

The gate at Dogaku-ji is quite unusual. Architecturally, it is, I believe, Chinese in style, but with a different style of roof that is not normally seen with this kind of gate.

Some people complain about the graffiti scratched into the walls, but some of it seems quite old and overall gives a kind of wabi-sabi patina....

Dogakuji turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise.

It is the second of the twenty "extra" temples on the Shikoku Ohenro pilgrimage, but when I walked that pilgrimage, it was too far off the main route for me to visit.

I visited it as the 11th temple on the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage, and my first stop was the cave-like structure housing the Fudo.

Often, Fudo is shown with two young boy attendants. In total, he has 36 of these attendants, and on this pilgrimage, each temple has a different one of the 36. Here at Dogakuji, it is Ratara Doji.

The Fudo is a Noten Fudo, said to offer protection against dementia and strokes.

The Seven Lucky Gods.

It is said the temple was founded by Gyoki.

There is a miniature Ohenro pilgrimage with all 88 of the honzon statues represented as well as then20 extra.

I believe that under each of the circles on the ground is sand brought from each temple as well.

Now this "hall" is filled with windchimes.

I visited on December 27th, 2016. A few months later the main hall was completely destroyed by fire,but I believe it has now been rebuilt.

The temple is famous for its wisteria, but in midwinter, were obviously dormant.

The temple is most famous for being where Kobo Daishi studied and trained as a young child.

He came back much later as an adult and enshrined various statues that he himself had carved, including the honzon, a Yakushi Nyorai.

It is a National Treasure and survived the recent bfire.

The spring was used by the child Kobo Daishi for water for his inkstone.

Behind the spring is a delightful garden I will post about next.

The main hall that burned down a few months after this photo was taken...

Several Mizuko Jizo line the approach.

Overall Dogakuji was a nice surprise and has many sights of interest.

The statue to the right of the steps is of Iroha Daishi, about the legend that Kobo Daishi composed the Iroha, a poem that is a kind of mnemonic for the Japanese syllabary, similar to the alphabet song in English. He is said to have composed it as a child here, but the statue shows an older Kobo. For many reasons, historians say the Iroha was composed several centuries after Kobo Daishi.

The previous post in this series on my walk around Shikoku on the Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the nearby temple 10, Tozenji.

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Tozenji Temple 10 Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage

 

27th December, 2016, and I begin day 7 of my walk along the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage at temple 10, Tozenji.

It is located in Ishii, between the mountains and the south bank of the Yoshino River, not too far from Awa Kokubunji Temple.

Since I visited, the main hall with the tin roof covering the thatch has been demolished and a new buiding built.

The temple was a branch of the famous Naritasan temple in Chiba but separated from it in 1905.

Naritasan seems to have major branch temples in most prefectures. This one was known as the Ofudo-san of the southern islands.

There was no signboard, no-one home when I visited, and I have been unable to find any other information in English or Japanese....

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the illuminations and art festival the evening before in Tokushima City.

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Tokushima Illuminations

 

I spent a couple of nights in Tokushima City around Christmas time in 2016 while I was walking the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage, and so was able to catch the year-end illuminations.

Known as the city of water, Tokushima has a lot of rivers flowing though it (138 they claim), and rivers always double the amount of illuminations with their reflections.

Even so, Tokushima that year started a Digital LED Festival, and invited many artists working with LED lights to display their work.

The biggest artist invited was Teamlab, the arts collective known for leading-edge illuminated art environments.

Their biggest piece was titled Luminous River, and involved hundreds of large spheres floating on the surface that changed colours along with a soundtrack.

I did post on the Luminous River installation earlier....

Along one of the riverbanks was a line of digital LED artworks.

Most were inside transparent boxes, obvioulsy to protect them from the weather and the passrs-by..

Theer was also the standard illuminations, on trees, bridges etc

As well as a group of paddleboarding Santa's...

All in all a pleasantly different set of year-end illuminations....

Not sure how long the tradition carried on for, though I did read they were still doing the art display in 2018.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the free Awa Puppet Museum in downtown Tokushima.

if you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published or made public. I post new content almost every day, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the most recent posts.