Kannonji Temple Tokushima

 

I don't have any hard data to back it up, but I would guess that one of the most common names for a temple in Japan would be Kannon-ji.

At the bade of Mount Bizan, somewhat south of the downtown area is a Kannonji that would appear to be quite old.

At least the Nio guardians are. They are said to have been carved in 1326.

They were restored in 1987.

Other than the fact that it is a Koyasan Shingon temple, I am afraid I can find no other information about it.

Tbere is a statue of En no Gyoja, photo 10, and the sign says he stayed here, but not wether a tempke was here at that time...

Steps lead up the mountainside to some old shrines, which I will cover next, and along the path were numerous Buddhist statues....

The previous post in this series on Tokushima City was on a group of shrines a little north of Kannonji.

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Garden at Kozanji Temple

 

The garden at Kozanji Temple in Chofu, Yamaguchi, is neither well-known nor well-visited, though the temple itself and its grounds are usually crowded.

Kozanji is the 19th temple on the 33 temple Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, and that was the reason for my visit. 

It's a large, Zen temple whose main hall is a National Treasure as it is one of the oldest Kara-yo buildings left in Japan. Kara-yo is the Chinese-influenced temple architecture that was introduced along with Zen in the 13th century and so is strongly associated with the Zen sects.

While wandering the grounds I was approached by a priest who engaged me in conversation. Foreign visitors to the temple are certainly not rare, so maybe he was intrigued by my pilgrim jacket.

Anyway, it was he who suggested I seek out and visit the garden which is tucked away at the side of one of the main halls and seems to have been designed to be viewed from what I presume to be the abbots residence.

Since 2020, photography of the garden has been forbidden, but not when I visited in 2014.

The buildings that view the gardenm,... the shoin, kuri, and walkway between them, were built in the late Edo Period, so it is believed that is when the garden was built.

It has a long, shinji pond, but most of the garden is moss.....

Unfortunately, the strong shadows and bright sunlight made it harder to appreciate the garden....

I suspect an overcast day might be better to appreciate the moss.....

The previous post in this series on November 27th, 2014, day 25 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, was on the old samurai district near the temple.

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Tokushima Illuminations

 

I spent a couple of nights in Tokushima City around Christmas time in 2016 while I was walking the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage, and so was able to catch the year-end illuminations.

Known as the city of water, Tokushima has a lot of rivers flowing though it (138 they claim), and rivers always double the amount of illuminations with their reflections.

Even so, Tokushima that year started a Digital LED Festival, and invited many artists working with LED lights to display their work.

The biggest artist invited was Teamlab, the arts collective known for leading-edge illuminated art environments.

Their biggest piece was titled Luminous River, and involved hundreds of large spheres floating on the surface that changed colours along with a soundtrack.

I did post on the Luminous River installation earlier....

Along one of the riverbanks was a line of digital LED artworks.

Most were inside transparent boxes, obvioulsy to protect them from the weather and the passrs-by..

Theer was also the standard illuminations, on trees, bridges etc

As well as a group of paddleboarding Santa's...

All in all a pleasantly different set of year-end illuminations....

Not sure how long the tradition carried on for, though I did read they were still doing the art display in 2018.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the free Awa Puppet Museum in downtown Tokushima.

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