Yokai Temple Enryu-in

 

One of the sub-temples of Daisenji, high up on the slopes of the sacred mountain Mount Daisen, is Enryu-in.

Many temples have painted ceilings where each small square contains a picture of flowers, animals, deities, etc.

Enryu-in is unique in having a ceiling with 108 paintings of Yokai, Japan's supernatural beings, including ghosts, monsters, poltergeists, shape-shifters, and spooks.

They were painted by Mizuki Shigeru, the famous manga artist who revived many of the traditional yokai and created many new ones.

He lived not far from here in Sakaiminato, and it is a mecca for manga and yokai fans. I have posted before on the yokai statues that line the street there: post 1, post 2, post3.

However, the temple has been closed to the public since 2018, so members of the public can no longer view this unique artwork.

The reason, they say, is that now that the cost of rebuilding the temple has been repaid, they are reverting to being a purely religious facility.

Quite a few people are kind of miffed about this. The yokai ceiling has attracted lots of visitors, so the town's tourist office is unhappy, but many, many potential visitors are also unhappy.

Mizuki Shigeru painted the ceiling for free, as a donation to help the temple raise funds. Countless thousands of his fans have donated to the temple, and so it seems a little churlish of the temple.

Anyway, you can enjoy my photos as I visited before 2018...

The previous post in this series was on the walk up the mountain.

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A Walk Up Mount Daisen

 

Day 45 of my walk begins in Yonago, the main city of western Tottori.

The next temple is high on Mount Daisen, the mountain that dominates the view and is the highest mountain in the Chugoku region at 1,729m.

Heading out of town I must be on the old San-in Do highway as there are numerous large, traditional properties....

Yonaga is not a big city, so I was soon out into the countryside, but there were still some large properties...

As I got closer to Daisen I stopped in at Ogamiyama Shrine, linked to the sacred site up on the mountain where I am heading.

As I left the flat plain and started the slow climb up the mountain, I found some lovely, old Buddhist statues in a roadside shrine, many coats of paint peeling away.

What I presume to be a folk-carving of a !,000 armed Kannon looks eerily like a sea creature or beetle

A little further, I stopped in at a couple of shrines, Okanari Shrine and Hiyoshi Shrine.

Passed by an army driving school.....

The road a little later was lined with tall pine trees. Believed to have been planted around 400 years ago to mark the route for travellers up to Daisenji Temple...

I am only going as high as the temple, about halfway up at about 900 meters above sea level.. However, the higher slopes of the mountain were covered in mist...

By early afternoon, I reached the small settlement below the temple. Now bolstered by the trade in food and accommodation for hikers of the mountain in summer and skiers in winter.

The previous post was on Okanari Shrine and Hiyoshi Shrine

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Okanari Shrine & Akamatsu Hiyoshi Shrine

 

A little farther up the lower slopes of Mount Daisen, I came to Okanari Shrine.

When this area was being settled and developed, three shrines of the Kumano Sanzan were founded, this one being for Shingu Daimyojin, so the kami here is Hayatamano.

The village was originally named Shingu, but later was renamed Okanari. During the 16th century the shrine was supported by the local warlord, a vassal of the Mori.

In the late Edo Period the shrine functioned as a subsidiary shrine of Ogamiyama Shrine.

In early Meiji the name was chnged from Shingu Daimyojin to Okanari Shrine.

Within the grounds is a Yamaguchi Shrine enshrining Susanoo, Oyamatsumi, and Inari.

A little further, in the village of Akamatsu, I came to a Hiyoshi Shrine. There are no records of its founding, except that as Sanno Gongen, the original name for Hiyoshi Shrines, it has been there since ancient times.

The kami are Okuninushi, Oyamatsumi, Toyotamahime, Ojin, & Inari

In 1913 all the other shrines in the village were merged with Hiyoshi Shrine.

A Myoken shrine, an Ikenojinja Shrine, an Ichinotani Shrine, and an Otani shrine combined to create the mix of kami mentioned above.

The shrine is home to a unique festival tradition the Akamatsu Kojin Festival, held only in leap years, and an Intangible Folk Cultural Tradition. In it a 25 meter long serpent made of straw is carried through the village and then placed at the Kojin altar in the shrine.

This is obviously an extension of the Kojin straw serpents found at just about every shrine in Izumo, and the equivalent of Omoto in our region of Iwami. Straw serpents can be found in most parts of Japan and usually represent the local land kami.

The previous post was on Ogamiyama Shrine.

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Ogamiyama Shrine

 

Ogamiyama Shrine has a long and somewhat unusual history. It is mentioned in the Izumo Fudoki, and is listed in the Engi Shiki, and is the Ninomiya, second-ranked shrine, of Hoki Province.

Mount Daisen has long been a sacred mountain, and the shrine's origins lie in a small shrine built high up on the mountain by ascetic monks.

As the mountain was covered in deep snow during the winter, a second shrine, this shrine, was built down below so people could worship in the winter. The top shrine became known as the summer shrine and this one was the winter shrine.

The kami enshrined here is Okuninushi. In ancient times, when the Fudoki were written, Okuninushi was considered to reside in/on Mount Daisen. All the stories of Okuninushi come from what is now Tottori, and at the northern base of Daisen is a Yayoi settlement that was one of the biggest in all of Japan, a strong possibility for the capital of an Izumo Polity that ceded the country to the Yamato.

As the mountain shifted to a more Buddhist-oriented mountain worship, the main deity of the mountain became Jizo.

The mountain was a huge shugendo centre with at one point 189 sub-temples and a community of 3,000 "warrior monks". The most famous warrior monk was Benkei, and there are stories that he spent time on Daisen.

The current shrine buildings date to the mid-Edo period. The grounds have 1,000 Hydrangea bushes, and this is one of the top hydrangea spots in Tottori.

The Tottori Association of Shrines says that along with Okuninushi, also enshrined here is Oyamatsumi, Susano, & Sukunahikona.

Secondary shrines in the grounds include a Misaki Shrine enshrining Amaterasu and two other kami.

In 1868 with the separation of Buddhas and Kami, Jizo was removed from the shrine at 900m, the summer shrine, and it became the Okumiya, inner shrine; this shrine, the winter shrine, became the main shrine.

Flanked by two foxes is the "worship from afar" shrine, enabling those unable to climb the mountain to the inner shrine to worship from afar.

As well as the hydrangeas, the large shrine grounds also includes one of the biggest Iris gardens in the San-in region.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on the walk into Tottori that ended the previous day.

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