Daisen-ji Temple 29 Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

 

Daisenji was said to be founded in 718 when a man, while hunting a deer, came to the realization that killing was a sin and so became a monk and enshrined a statue of Jizo in a hermitage on the mountain. 

In 865 it became a Tendai sect temple and grew into a major shugendo site with 160 temples and 3,000 warrior monks.

Of course, in early Meiji when Shugendo was outlawed and the government decreed the separation of Buddhas and kami, followed by a campaign against Buddhism, everything changed and many structures were lost.

What is now the main hall was the Dainichi Hall, and the Jizo was moved there.

Higher up the mountain where the main temple once was, a lodging facility was turned into a Shinto shrine, the okunoin of Ogamiyama Shrine I stopped in at on the way up the mountain.

A development of the Jizo faith that developed out of Mount Daisen was for the protection of livestock.

This led to Daisen Gyuuba Ichi, the only livestock market with a religious twist. By the Edo Period it was one of the top 3 livestock markets in Japan, and in the Meiji Period it was the biggest.

The statue of the cow is said to have been made out of the nose-rings of cows.

Nearby is a Goma Hall with Fudo Myoo...

And near to that the Kannon Hall, the goal for this pilgrimage.

From here the path leads further up the mountain to the Niomon. Obviously this was the entrance to the main temple in earlier times.

From the Niomon, the path goes up to the shrine.

At 700 metres, it is the longest shrine approach in Japan.

During the opening of the mountain ceremonies each year, thousands of people carrying torches snake up the path, making an awesome sight.

It was getting late, and I wanted to get down the mountain a bit, as I was sleeping out that night and it would be warmer the lower I would be able to get, so I chose not to go all the way up to the shrine

The previous post was on the Amida Hall at this site...

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Kiyomizudera Temple 28 Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

There are many Kiyomizudera temples scattered across Japan. This one is in Yasugi, Shimane, and may very well be the oldest.

Kiyomizudera literally means "Pure Water Temple", and the most famous is the one in Kyoto.

The temple is very old with the date of 587 generally given for its founding.

According to the legend, an itinerant monk named Sonryu investigated the mountain where locals claimed an eerie light could be seen. He found an old man who gave him a statue of Kannon, and so the first, crude structure housing the statue was erected. Not long afterwards a spring of clear water appeared.

The temple had imperial support as well as from local powers and grew in stature.

At its peak it had 48 buildings, though now only 10 are left. It was the premier temple in the whole San-in region.

The main hall is dated to 1393, and is an Important Cultural Property along with several statues dating back to the Heian Period.

One of the huge trees lining the final set of stairs is said to be 1,000 years old.

In the Gomado next to the main hall are several Fudo statues and a Zao Gongen statue.

The stone statue of Fudo at the start of the climb up to the temple is particularly fine. Top photo.

In 847, a disciple of Saicho stopped here on his way back from China, and since then it has been a Tendai temple.

In the battles between the Amago and the Mori in the late 16th century, everything except the main hall was destroyed by fire.

The pagoda, the last remaining 3-storey wooden pagoda in San-in, was built in 1859.

Unusually, visitors are allowed inside to climb to the upper level.

There is quite a large Inari shrine in the temple.

I left via the Niomon and took a trail down the mountain. This suggests that in earlier times the temple was primarily approached from the East.

On the current approach to the temple there are two eateries offering traditional temple cuisine, Shojin Ryori.

The previous post was on the walk here from Unjuji Temple.

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Ichibata Yakushi Temple 26 Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

Gakuen-ji Temple 25 Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage

 

Gakuenji has always been one of my favourite temples. Located in fairly remote mountains, it takes some effort to visit.

Unfortunately, even in the twenty or so years I have known it the temple has lost several large structures. As well as being number 25 on the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, it is also number 3 on the Izumo Kannon Pilgrimage. Some shots from that visit can be seen here.

The temple is very, very old, being founded in the last decade of the 6th century. A monk prayed at the waterfall here and Empress Suiko's eye problem was healed and so she ordered a temple built.

It was a major shugendo centre and later became a Tendai sect temple.

Legend has it that Benkei trained here and carried a bell here from Mount Daisen, an obvious mirror of the famous story of him taking a bell up to Mount Hiei.

The current main hall was built while the Mori controlled much of Chugoku in the late 16th century.

Between its original founding and the current site, the temple was destroyed and moved several times, including having two separate precincts.

Because of this is has two honzons, a Kannon and a Yakushi, both secret.

These are just about the only statues you can see inside the very dark interior...

About twenty years ago the treasure hall was broken into and thieves made off with numerous treasures... an indication of how remote it is.

The grounds become packed with visitors during the autumn colours season.....

Next to the main hall is the Matarajin Shrine. This used to be located at Izumo Taisha and was disassembled and carried up the mountain when Izumo Taisha removed all Buddhist elements in the 16th century. Matarajin is a fairly obscure deity, mostly seen at Tendai temples. Curiously, Matarajin is equated with Susano, and it was Gakuenji that stated that Susano was the primary deity of Izumo Taisha until the 16th century, a fact that is now recognized by historians but ignored by everyone else.

One of the few structures still left at Gakuenji is the magnificent priests quarters and library.

It has an Imperial Gate only used by imperial messengers, and in fact the current Emperor visited here when he was Crown Prince.

The previous post was on the walk over the mountain to get here.

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