Kotohira Shrine, Imbe Shrine, & more Tanuki Shrines

 

The Kotohira Shrine on the hillside overlooking the southern part of Tokushima City was relocated to this spot in 1616 by Hachisuka Iemasa as a tutelary shrine of Tokushima Castle.

At the bottom of the hill by the steps leading up to the shrine is the largest stone lantern in all of Japan. Standing 9.8 meters tall, 10.24 including the base, it was created in 1839.

It was donated  primarily by Indigo merchants.

In the grounds of the shrine are a couple of ceramic lanterns which reminded me of Tozan Shrine in Arita.

Like all Kotohira Shrines, it was called Konpira until Meiji when the name and the kami were changedto fit the new national ideology. All Konpira/Kotohira shrines are branches of the original not too far away in Kagawa.

There are numerous secondary shrines within the grounds, including several shrines to Tanuki, including Oyotsu Daimyojin which seems to be the most well known.

There are dozens of shrines to Tanuki in the Tokushima area, including several I visited earlier in the day at the Hachiman Shrine.

All the structures on the hillside were burned down during bombing raids of WWII and so are fairly recent, concrete, reconstructions.

A little above the Kotohira Shrine is an Imbe Shrine, which has ancient roots but was only located here in the late 19th century.

The Imbe were a powerful clan in ancient Japan and ruled over this part of Shikoku.

They were producers of hemp and nowadays still produce hemp for use in Imperial rituals.

The original shrine was lost in history, but several nearby shrines claimed to be the original.

The government made a decision and established the shrine here, although it was temporarily located within the Kotohira Shrine.

Soem sources claim the kami enshrined is Futodama, but other sources say it is Amenohiwashi. The Imbe wrote the 9th century Kogoshui, which offers an alternative version of some of the history written by the Nakatomi in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki.

The previous post in this series on Tokushima City was on the large Kannonji Temple down below the shrines.

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 It will not be published or made public.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

Kannonji Temple Tokushima

 

I don't have any hard data to back it up, but I would guess that one of the most common names for a temple in Japan would be Kannon-ji.

At the bade of Mount Bizan, somewhat south of the downtown area is a Kannonji that would appear to be quite old.

At least the Nio guardians are. They are said to have been carved in 1326.

They were restored in 1987.

Other than the fact that it is a Koyasan Shingon temple, I am afraid I can find no other information about it.

Tbere is a statue of En no Gyoja, photo 10, and the sign says he stayed here, but not wether a tempke was here at that time...

Steps lead up the mountainside to some old shrines, which I will cover next, and along the path were numerous Buddhist statues....

The previous post in this series on Tokushima City was on a group of shrines a little north of Kannonji.

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.

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.