Japan Sea Coast Kute to Hane

 

After leaving Kute, a line of small hills separates the road from the sea and inland a largish area of rice paddies.....

This was a brackish lake that has been drained by cutting an opening through the hillside allowing the land to be reclaimed and planted in rice. This was done quite a long time ago in the Kamakura Period.

I am not at all sure where the lake originally drained, but where it now reaches the sea is a spire of rock called Kakedo Matsushima.

It once had a pine tree standing on top of it, and maybe I am misremembering, but I seem to remember it was still there when I first passed by on a train more than twenty years ago.

It is very much a miniature version of Candle Rock, the iconic sight in the Oki Islands.

There is a small harbour then a beach and tucked up against the sheer cliffs the main harbour of Hane.

Hane was at some point a small beach resort and there are still a couple of ryokan operating.

The train line got here in 1912 so it may have started then, although it has the feel of the 1960s about it.

The cliffs are quite impressive and there is a lighthouse on top.

From here there is no access to the coast fo the next 5 kilometers until the mouth of the Tagi River, the old boundary between Iwami and Izumo, so I took thebtrain home from here and will start from Tagi on the next leg.

The previous post was on the previous section of coast from Torii to Kute.

Fukuyama Castle

 

Fukuyama Castle Park is, in my opinion, one of the under-rated tourist spots in western Japan.

Not so much for the castle itself, although it it is somewhat impressive, but rather for the number of interesting sites within the castle grounds, like a park, a garden, two big museums of art and of history, and a multitude of shrines.

All within a few minutes walk of a major railway station....

The castle itself was built between 1619 and 1622 after the daimyo of the area, Mizuno Katsunari deemed that the current castle, Kannabe castle, was unsuitable.

Katsunari was given support by the Shogunate so that the castle would be large and strong enough to impress and hopefully intimidate the Tozama daimyo that were in the surrounding domains

Parts of the castle including the main gate were brought from the dismantled Fushimi Castle.

The southern part of the castle and its moats have been lost to city development, including the shiunkansen station, but the northern part still remains and just outside of the grounds are numerous large temples and shrines.

The 5-storey keep was one of the few that were not destroyed in the early Meiji years when most castles in Japan were dismantled.

However, it was destroyed by air raids of WWII. The current keep was built in 1966.

Since I visited the northern side of the keep has had black iron plates attached to replicate its original appearance.

It originally was quite an intimidating castle, with 10 gates and 23 yagura.

The only structures remaining from the original are the Fushimi Yagura and Sujigane Gate, both of which are Important Cultural Properties.

In 1710 the domain passed to the Abe Clan who held it until the dissolution of the domains in the first years of the Meiji Period.

The penultimate Abe daimyo was Abe Masahiro who as a senior minister in the government signed the treaty with Commodore Perry.

The park around the castle is, like so many castle parks in Japan, planted with lots of cherry trees, and so is a popular viewing spot.

The reconstructed keep is home to the castle museum and has an entry fee as does the big art museum and history museum in the park, but the park itself is free to enter.

The previous post in this series on my walk on day 9 of the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on the Tamashima Historic Preservation District.

Shuzenji Temple 25 Sasaguri Pilgrimage

 

Starting day 2 of our walk along the Sasaguri Pilgrimage and it is already promising to be filled with hundreds of statues of Fudo Myoo, just like the first day yesterday.

Even before reaching Shuzenji, temple 25, there was a strange roadside "chapel" that had a couple of Fudo statues ( photos 2 & 3 )

Shuzenji was a small, unmanned temple up the narrow road leading up the mountain to Ichinotaki Temple.

Shuzenji is a Shingon temple and was relocated to this spot in 1960.

The honzon is a One Vow Jizo that does not grant multiple wishes, rather just your one most important wish. Photo 13.

It is said the statue came from Shinshoji, the 25th temple on Shikoku.

Since I visited the statue, which had become dark from numerous goma fires, has been restored and is now very colourful.

There are numerous smaller, "folk" stone statues of Fudo, as well as a larger tableau with two attendants, shown below.

The temple also has a Toyokawa Inari Shrine.

Just about every single small "temple" on this pilgrimage so far has had dozens of statues on display, an inordinate amount of them being Fudo's....

The previous post was on the first stop of the day, Yamate Kannon-do, temple 52,  just a few hundred meters down the road.