Across the Ou Plain

 

The first part of day 44 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was in Higashi Izumo, and I walked across the Ou Plain, once home to the provincial capital of Izumo.

My first stop was Kamosu Shrine with its National Treasure main hall. Just across the road from the entrance to the shrine was a rice paddy with black rice.

I don't remember ever coming across black rice before. Red rice I have seen growing and have eaten, but not black. I wonder if it is just a coincidence that it is grown next to the shrine, or if it is grown for a ritual. I have not seen mention of such a ritual in my readings on Kamosu Shrine...

Between Kamosu Shrine and Rokusho Shrine there was a roadside altar with this delightful, aged statue. I think it may be a Dainichi.

A line of giants march across the land from the nuclear power station NW of Matsue. I am reminded of Kurosawa, one of the great Japanese film directors, and a favorite of mine, who stopped making historical movies in Japan because there were so few places where power lines could not be found intruding into the view.

My route roughly followed the course of the Iu River, which empties into the Nakaumi Lagoon.

A small tunnel cuts through a hillside as I start to turn East and head over  some low hills.

It is early October, and some of the paddies have been harvested, some not yet. The paddies in this area, being a plain, are so much larger than in my area where the valleys are narrow.

As I gain a little elevation, I can see the Nakaumi Lagoon and the eastern end of the Shimane Peninsula beyond.

Not completely sure, but I believe this Praying Mantis, Kamakiri in Japanese, is nearing the end of its lifecycle....

Whereas this guy has a few more months before needing to hibernate for a while.

Across rural Japan are thousands and thousands of construction company yards filled with scaffolding and other equipment,.... many of these yards are abandoned....

The previous post in the series was on Rokusho Shrine....

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Mountain Bounty

 

Day 9 of my walk along the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimage, and I am walking through some remote mountain country I had no been to before.

It's early May, so plenty of flowers..... also industrial waste..... there is a lot of abandoned construction company sites filled with scaffolding and such.... also plenty of dumped vehicles...... but a few times I've seen industrial drums rusting.....

Snakes have been out and about for months already..... not sure what species this guy is, but its not a poisonous mamushi...... wouldnt bother me if it was.....

This gentleman was tending his hives. Don' t remember seeing many hives in Japan, but the honey must come from somewhere..... I suspect most not from Japan....

This couple have been harvesting fuki, a wild plant eaten quite a bit.... I believe it is called butterbur... pieces of the stem re often found in bentos...

The ubiquitous roadside shrine.... with fresh flowers.....

The bamboo shoot harvest was a couple of weeks ago around my village, but I guess up here in the mountains it is a few weeks later..... when trimmed, this barrowload will fetch a pretty penny from city folk.

I start to drop down into the area around Mito Onsen... where a small, civic matsuri is taking place.... the first kagura dances are ritual and not masked, but I decide not to wait around for the later dances....

The previous post in this series was on two interesting shrines I visited earlier in the day.

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Yet More Deities at Myo-on-ji Temple

 

This is the 4th and final post on Myo-on-ji temple. It is not a famous temple, nor particularly ancient or large. However, it does have a large number of statues in numerous small shrines, due to the fact that it is a pilgrimage temple on the Sasaguri 88 temple pilgrimage in Fukuoka.

Myo-on-ji was the 11th temple we had visited since starting to walk the pilgrimage. It had raken just under 2 hours since starting at Sasaguri Station, and by now I had come to realize that there were going to be a lot of very diverse statuary tp be seen over the next 4 days.

I started out by posting some photos of Fudo Myo, one of my favorite deities, and a figure that is very common on this pilgrimage. So much so that my second post was a much larger selection of Fudo statues at Myo-on-ji, with one of my wordiest posts where I try to explain the complexity and diversity of Japanese deity identities. The third post was on a variety of statues of Kannon, another very popular deity, technically a bodhisattva.

This time I show another group of statues, mostly multi-armed, multi-headed, fierce deities that originated in India. The top photo is Aizen Myo, among other things associated with sex and love. The next three might be various Myo..... or not..... If I was to dig into it I might be able to say with some certainty the names and classifications of these deities, but I don't have the time. Probably some readers would know.

Statues of snakes, often with offerings of coins, are commonly associated with Benzaiten, the complex Buddhist-Shinto deity that among other things is often associated with water and many times is conflated with Suijin, the water god. I have also seen these snake statues at altars to Kojin the land god in Izumo.

Thgis final photo is another deity I cannot immediately identify. though for some reason I seem to think it might actually be a Bato kannon......

From Myo-on-ji the pilgrimage route heads up into the mountains and the temples ar further apart, but some are much bigger than any yet visited...

Some Art at Kanaya Tenmangu

Kanaya Tenmangu shrine is located just outside what used to be the gate into Hagi castle and was where the the Daimyo and official travellers would stop and pray for a safe journey, consequently it received many paintings and such as offerings.

The paintings of horses may well be an earlier version of "ema", votive plaques that were paintings of horses as a substitute for giving a real horse. The coiled snake painting is probably connected to Benzaiten.

One of the things I look for when visiting small, local shrines is the artwork.

The final photo is one of the Zuijin at the shrine. A signboard showed picture of the Buddhist Nio guardians that guarded the shrine until the Meiji Period.

Goods from Japan To Your Home Or Business

Sacred White Snake

White snakes are considered sacred in Japan, and are mostly associated with Benzaiten. I posted before on some white snakes found at Iwakuni.

This one however was on Okinawa at the sacred "power spot" Dai Sekirinzan at the far north of the main island.

Though now part of Japan, Okinawa did not share the ancient myths and gods of Japan, having their own traditions that are more connected to Chinese myths and legends than Japan.

Ishigaki Sea Salt

Mamushi

The most poisonous snake in Japan is the Mamushi, also the most common. Gloydius Bomhoffii is a pit-viper and is found all over.

About ten people a year die from its bite, though several thousand get bitten. I see them around my house and in the garden all the time, and as anyone who knows me will know I quite like snakes and do not have the irrational fear of them that many seem afflicted with.

My neighbor catches them and puts them in jars of sake to make a drink called Mamushi Zake. Though many will refer to it as a "tonic", the main use of Mamushi zake is as a viagra equivalent.

2013 Year of the Snake

2013 is the Year of the Snake so I thought I would post some pics of that most lucky of all snakes, the White Snake. Long associated with Benzaiten, one of the 7 Lucky Gods of Japan, white snakes have appeared in many stories and legends throughout history, in all probabilty albino mutations of regular snake species, but the trait is not passed on to descendants.

But Iwakuni in Hiroshima is home to the unique Iwakuni White Snake, the only place in the country where they appear and a registered national monument.

They are first recorded as appearing in the 18th century, and are a mutation of the common Japanese rat Snake, Elaphe climocophora.

Best wishes for the coming year to all my readers.

A Walk to Suga. Part 3

This is the third and final part of a walk I took last May up in Izumo. The previous 2 posts can be found in the links below this post.

Walking along any road, in a city, in the country, or up in the mountains, you can't go far without passing a buddhist altar by the side of the road. Sometimes there is a single statue, usually Jizo, and sometimes several. Even in the most remote locations one can see signs of recent offerings.

May is a wonderful time to go walking in the countryside. The paddies have been filled and the reflections make for wonderful mirrored scenes.

This day there were a lot of snakes on the roads..... the filled paddies bring out the frogs, and the frogs bring out the snakes.

I passed several small shrines to Kojin, the land-god represented as a snake.

Also passed a nice shrine with many secondary shrines in the grounds. Unusually all the secondary shrines had signboards

Finally I arrived in the village of Suga, and here was my destination, Suga Shrine.

It was here, according to legend, that Susano and Kushinada settled after the defeat of Yamata no Orochi. It was here also that Susano composed what is considered the first Tanka.....

Many clouds rise up
clouds appear to form a fence
holding this couple;
They form layers of a fence
Oh, the layers of that fence.

Because of its out of the way location Suga Shrine does not receive so many visitors, but enough that a Miko is on duty most days.

Like many shrines there are a pair of giant cedar trees straddling the entrance.

I carry on down the road towards Daito. I have a sleeping bag with me, but I see that there will be a bus in a few minutes that will take me back into Matsue in time to catch a train home, so I decide to leave Daito to another day.

I walked about 25k in 7 hours and visited 12 shrines......... another good day...