Oki-ke House, Garden, & Museum

 

The Oki-ke is a traditional, large residence next door to the Tamawakasu Shrine on Dogen, the largest of the Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan.

It is built in a style unique to the Oki Islands.

It is the home of the Oki family, hereditary priests of the shrine since ancient times.

It was built in 1801 and is designated an Important Cultural Property.

The family still reside there, so it cannot be entered, though one can see inside from a couple of spots.

There is a quite nice garden surrounding the residence and the museum building next door.

I don't remember having seen this kind of bamboo before. It' called Kikko bamboo.

I thought it must have been manipulated in some way to force the strange zig-zag pattern, but its natural.

Inside the museum the pride of place goes to the ekirei, station bell. It seem this is the only remaining example in Japan.

This small copper bell was a mark of status since the ritsuryo-state period of ancient Japan. It gave the person carrying it the right to horses at stations along the old imperial routes.

There are other things on display that may be of interest to some....

The previous post was on the neighbouring Tamawakasu Shrine, also with Important Cultural Properties.

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Izumo Shrine Suo Ninomiya

 

The Ninomiya, second-ranked shrine, of the old Suo Province was the Izumo Shrine in the Tokuji District on the banks of the Saba River north of Hofu.

It is said tat it was established to appease the Izumo tribe as they expanded into the Saba River basin. It is generally accepted that Izumo controlled a large confederacy that reached from northern Kyushu up to the Niigata area.

It is recorded that it was established in 715 and in 738 it was granted imperial permission to be the Ninomiya of the province.

The shrine was well supported by the Ouchi Clan who ruled the area and then later by the Mori who took over from the Ouchi.

The main kami listed are Okuninushi and Kotoshironushi, although I note that until the 16th century the main kami of Izumo Taisha was Susanoo. The current building dates to 1750.

There are a couple of different Hachiman shrines in the grounds and twenty smaller shrines gathered from around the area.

Most interesting to me was the giant Sugi tree..... this would have been the kind of tree Chogen would have been looking for....

It is 43 meters high, with a 12.5 metre circumference at its base, and a diameter of 7.2 meters.

The previous post was on the monk Chogen and his rebuilding of Todaiji with lumber from this area...

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From Kirobara to Onbara along the Gonokawa

 

After visiting the huge stump of what used to be a sacred tree I carried on upstream on the south/east bank of the Gonokawa River.

So far, on the third day of my walk upriver, more people seem to live on the opposite bank.... something I believe holds true at least as far as Miyoshi.

At some point I cross the border from Kawamoto Town into Misato City, not really a city but a collection of villages and small towns collected together administratively...

Misato has a total of 14 bridges, both rail and road, that cross the Gonokawa. That number may now be reduced as the rail bridges get dismantled since the line closure...

The first of these bridges ( or the last if you are coming downstream) is the Minato Bridge.

As with everywhere in Japan, small Buddhist altars can be found by the roadside.

Then it was Take Station, the next station on the former Sanko Line. Not dismantled and demolished like some on the line....

In England it would be called a Halt rather than a station as there were no buildings and never had any staff.

Of course Take means bamboo....

Up ahead, Mount Sanbe, the active volcano that is 1,126 meters high, and the highest point in Iwami. The river heads towards it for a bit more, todays destination, and then does a 180 turn and heads away from it.

There is not much else to see until the next settlement, Onbara.

It is kind of divided by a hill into two parts....

I chose to walk through the village rather than stay on the riverbank...

The last set of photos are just shots of things that attracted my eye before reaching the village shrine.

The previous post in this series documenting the third day of my walk up the Gonokawa River to  its source was on the sacred tree and shrine in Kirobara.

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Chogen, the Saba River, & the Rebuilding of Todaiji Temple

 

Chogen was a Buddhist monk in the 12th century who spent time in China not just studying Buddhism but also architecture and civil engineering.

He was given the task of overseeing the reconstruction of the great Todaiji temple in Nara which had been burned down during the Taira no Shigehira Rebellion in 1180.

The district of Tokuji in the mountains of what is now southern Yamaguchi, belonged to Todaiji Temple and so at the age of 66 Chogen visited the area to find lumber for the reconstruction.

The Todaiji that he was to rebuild was even bigger than the one standing today which was the biggest wooden building in the world until fairly recently.

The lumber to build an even bigger Todaiji needed to include a lot of massive trees, which apparently were in short supply in the Kinki area.... no doubt because of all the temples and palaces built there...

One tree that Chogen is said to have harvested from around here was one 30 meters tall with a diameter of more than 1.5 meters.

Getting lumber of this size to Nara involved first getting it down the Saba River to the coast, about 25 kilometers.

About 70 labourers were involved, with huge ropes made of wisteria vine. In places the river was too shallow so Chogen created channels lined with stones to ease passage.

Stone baths used by the workers are found along the river banks. Also trees were planted on the banks to serve as mile-markers...

I reached the Saba River where the Shimaji flows into it, right where the monument to Chogen in the top two photos is.

I walked downstream a few kilometers before crossing and heading west along Route 376, which closely shadowed the Chugoku Expressway.

The previous post in this series on day 22 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on the nearby Kumano Shrine.

I have no idea what this building was but it seemed to be in the grounds of a shrine I visited next.

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