Tamawakasu Shrine Dogo

 

Tamawakasu Shrine on Dogo Island was the primary shrine for all of the Oki Islands, which until the late 19th century constituted a separate province of Japan.

Little is known about he main kami, Tamawakasu, although he is believed to be the founder and pioneer of the Oki Islands, said to be a descendant of Okuninushi.

Other kami enshrined here are Okuninushi, Susanoo, Inadahime, and Kotoshironushi.

Pretty much the main pantheon of Izumo.

Whoever the chieftan of the islands was, in the late 7th century when the Yamato government attempted to unify Japan, the chieftain was installed  as the governor of the province. Behind the shrine is a group of keyhole tombs, said to be the graves of the rulers of the area.

The family of priests who have controlled the shrine since then, the Oki Family, are descendants of the governor.

Their house is next door and I will cover that in the next post in the series.

The house, the honden of the shrine, and the Zuijinmon gate are all Important Cultural Properties, and are all thatched. The architectural style of the buildings is unique to the Oki Islands.

The honden dates to 1793, the house to 1801, and the zuijinmon to 1852

There is a huge, ancient Sugi tree estimated to be at least a thousand years old. Another fell down fairly recently.

It is called Yao Sugi, because the nun who planted it vowed to return in 800 years.

June 5th is the annual festival and it features horses. 8 horses bring the local kami from 8 different districts and numerous ceremonies are performed including galloping horses and yabusame, horseback archery. In former times horses from 48 districts would arrive.

The previous post in this series was on a scenic boat ride exploring the coast, river and main port of Dogo.

An Urban & Industrial Walk to Iwakuni

 

When I got off the ferry on the mainland, the rain had stopped, though it looked like drizzle back on Miyajima.

A dull and overcast day and my route was confined to busy roads through built-up and industrial areas with little to look forward to. No-one ever said pilgrimages were supposed to be fun and pleasant all the time.

However, I was able to find interesting subjects for my photographic compositions.

When Japan planned its rebuilding after the war, it decided to place as much industry as it could on the coast between Tokyo and North Kyushu. Close to the ports where raw materials would be imported, the population was encouraged to move to where the jobs were and so most of the population now lives in that strip. This was the primary cause of the depopulation of the countryside and the other parts of Japan, especially the Sea of Japan side where I live.

Not sure what kind of factories I passed, lots of refineries and chemical plants, methinks. Must have been hell 60 and 70 years ago before they installed pollution controls.

This huge paper mill was located just before the border of Hiroshima and Yamaguchi and so I would be spending the first of many nights in Yamaguchi.

The view from my hotel room was colourful....

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on my early morning walk on Miyajima.

Disappeared Japan Kirobara Shrine

 

After leaving Kawamoto and passing the Higashi Ohashi Bridge, I headed upstream to the little settlement of Kirobara, and I was excited to revisit a huge sacred tree. I was disappointed to see it had recently been cut down as it had become unsafe. The following pics are from a much earlier visit.

The tree was a Mukunoki, in English, the common name is Scabrous Aphanathe. It is said that in autumn, the leaves can be used as sandpaper. This one was thought to be about 300 years old and had a base circumference of more than 8 meters. The tree was considered to be the community's shrine.

In the first 2 decades of the twentieth century the government began a "shrine consolidation" program that, in esence, closed small local shrines and moved them to a larger shrine in the area. Before the program ended they had closed 100,000 shrines in Japan, about half of all shrines.

The primary reason was to shift people's focus from local, nature-based shrines to the national shrines like Hachiman or Tenmangu, Kasuga, etc. Another reason was that in the old days, Japanese in the countryside.... the vast majority of Japanese.... would take the day off work for matsuris, and in any small area there could be many small shrines each with its own festival day. Not good for the work ethic the government was trying to instill in the population. Western observers in the Meiji Period said that Japan could never industrialize because the population was quite lackadaisical in their work ethic and time keeping.

Yet another reason was that these local shrines were often set in a grove of old, large trees, and once the shrine was closed the trees were able to be cut for lumber. This point was strongly taken up by Japans first "enviromentalist" Minakata Kumagusu.

When the locals here expected their shrine to be destroyed they very quickly installed a small Tenmangu Shrine, pictured above, and their shrine was spared. My own village was not so lucky. The section of forest immediately behind my house used to be the local shrine. It was moved to the next village and since then no-one visits it. The shrine consolidation program is little known but was almost as big a factor in the creation of the modern Japanese religious landscape as the equally destructive separation of the Buddhas and Kami.

The previous post in this series documenting my walk up the Gonokawa River to its source was on the last bridge I passed, the Kawamoto Higashi Ohashi.

A Rainy Morning on Miyajima

 

Day 17 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage promised to be a wet one.

It had rained most of the night, and the rain still continued at first light.

Fortunately, I had a roof over my picnic bench and table in the small park.

There were some rental cabins in the park, and one group of young Japanese had been drinking heavily and made a fair bit of noise until the early hours. Every time I have been kept awake in a hotel room by rowdy guests they have been talking and shouting in Japanese, not noisy foreigners...

I was woken in the early hours by a small critter trying to take my small plastic bag of food. I think it may have been a weasel, but it had the bag in its teeth and wouldnt let go when I pulled it until I punched it on the nose....

I have no idea how scallops are farmed, but the piles of scallop shells suggest that it's not just oysters growing around Miyajima....unless scallop shells are used in some way....

A tunnel is the only land route around to this side of the island.

The locals are out and about before the tourists arrive, and don't seem at all phased by the rain....

The rain makes the color contrast a little stronger.....

Back past the two shrines from the evening before....

The mountains of Miyajima are obscured by clouds....

On the mainland, where my route now heads down the coast, it seems just as rainy..... the previous post in this series on walking the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was the walk of this post in reverse yesterday evening

Marine Messe Fukuoka

The Marine Messe is located on the waterfront in Hakata, close to the Hakata Port Tower.

It is an exhibition space, conference center, and a sports arena.

It was opened in 1995 and was designed by Nihon Sekkei.

It is the largest indoor multi-purpose facility in the prefecture.

For concerts it can accommodate audiences up to 15,000

The previous post in this series on the modern architecture of Fukuoka was on the nearby Hakata Port Tower