Coming Down the Mountain Temples 47 & 48 Shodoshima Pilgrimage

 

After leaving Renge-ji, temple 44 on the pilgrimage, my way was now pleasantly downhill as the sun got lower in the sky on day 4 of my walk around the island of Shodoshima on its smaller version of the 88 temple Shikoku Pilgrimage connected with Kobo Daishi.

It's a wide path down the mountainside and glimpses of the Nakayama Rice Terraces can be caught.

After a while the entrance to a small cave comes into view.

This is temple number 47, Togano o san.

It is not a big cave, and at the back is the small structure housing the honzon, and Eleven-faced Kannon.

It is said that Gyoki spent time in the cave. He was the legendary monk that is said to have  founded many of the temples on Shikoku a full century before Kobo daishi's time.

Near the cave entrance are several more small "halls" enshrining Amida, Kobo Daishi, and Akiba Daigongen.

A little further down hill and temple 48 comes into view, Bishamon-do.

A benefactor recently paid to have the Bishamoin statue renovated and a new building built.

From here the Giant Kannon can be seen across the valley. I will be visiting it tomorrow.

I didnt notic them myself, but there are wooden statues of the Three Wise Monkeys, evidence that the Koshin cult was strong in the area. Koshin was in essence a Taoist cult but now Koshin sites have been turned into Shinto or Buddhist sites.

The previous post was on Renge-ji, temple number 44 .

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 It will not be published and made public.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

More AIAV by Isozaki

 

The Akiyoshidai International Art Village is a major project of renowned Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

It is located in a narrow valley below the Akiyoshidai Karst and near to Akiyoshido, the biggest cavern in Japan.

In the previous post I showed you the ancillary buildings that include a copy of one of  Isozaki's earliest works. In this post I look at the large main building.

It was quite eerie exploring as there was not a single other person around.

Most of the doors were locked....

I would have liked to have seen the main auditorium, capable of seating 300. It has a very unusual layout and has three floors. The space can be rearranged to make any part of it the stage.

To the rear is an outdoor performance area. This has a fan-shaped grassy slope that enables up to 600 people to view a performance.

There is a central courtyard that has a square stage in the middle of shallow pools of water. Some of the rooms facing the courtyard can open up to blur the distinction between inside and outside.

There is a large gallery for exhibiting visual arts, but there was no exhibition when I was there.

There are a bunch of studios, to be used by artists in residence. They appeared to be empty.

There is also a cafe space, but that was closed.

There are rooms for seminars, and dressing room spaces for performing arts.

I liked some of the spaces,... the outside area with canopy held up by narrow pillars..... the narrow tunnels between the main building and the outside performance area....

I also liked the various materials used on the different eteriors... concrete, marble, metal sheeting, glass....

I have posted on several of Isozaki's buildings before, like his early library, now the Art Plaza in Oita that also has a gallery of his models and drawings.

I also  did a short piece on the occasion of  his death in 2022.

The previous post was on the other structures that make up the AIAV.

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

Garden at Taimasan Shrine

 

This is the second post on the garden at Taimasan Shrine. In the previous post, I showed how the garden looked in 2010, but this post is photos from a visit at the end of 2021.

In the second and third photos, a new garden has been built between the entrance to the shrine and the old temple garden. This new garden was built by the current head priest and is composed of two parts, Iwakura, and Iwasaka.

An Iwakura is a rock into which a kami descends, and an Iwasaka is a rock that mark the boundary of sacred space.

This makes this new garden very much a shinto garden.

The major difference in the main garden from when I visited 11 years earlier, is the white gravel area.

Also, this was the end of May, so some of the small trees are now full of leaves, and there are still a few flowers left on the azalea bushes.

For information on the history of the garden, please refer to the previous post.

The previous post in this series on  MountTaima, literally Hemp Mountain, was on the garden 11 years earlier....

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