Many hands, some feet: Kono Shrine

Where ever I go in Japan I am always on the lookout for shrines to explore. The number I have visited by now numbers in the thousands. My way favorite way to find shrines is by walking, but on car journeys my eyes are always peeled for torii. And so it was as we were driving up Rte 53 heading towards Tottori City passing through Chizu Town.

 

Kono Shrine, known locally as Nyakuichisan, appeared to be a fairly standard village shrine, but the whole point of exploring is to see if there is anything interesting or unusual. And here there certainly was.....

Inside the main shrine building was shelf upon shelf of wooden cutouts of hands and feet. They are a form of ema, votive tablet, and here is where you come if you have any kind of problem with your hands or feet.

 

Many of the ema were made by the local priest, and a stack was left in front of the building for petitioners to take and use. The priest asks for nothing in return, but the I suspect the saisenbako ( the wooden box on the front steps of shrines for donations) contains more money than most do. You write your name and address on the ema and then leave at the shrine. An unusual variation on the custom of leaving ema here is that if your prayers are answered, and you receive relief or healing for whatever ailment you were suffering, then you come back a second time and leave a second ema as thanks to the kami.

 

The origin of this custom lies in a legend from Okayama, south of Chizu. There was a benevolent giant name of Sanbutaro ( or Sanbotaro). He was so large that he could reach Kyoto in only three strides!! His head was buried down in Okayama, but for some reason that I have been unable to find out, his hands and feet were buried here.

 

Kono shrine is an amalgamation of 4 local shrines, so there are seven main kami enshrined here in all. The first, Susano, is well known to anyone who reads this blog. He is my favorite kami and the culture hero who created Izumo culture. According to Yamato mythology he is the brother of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess ancestor of the Imperial clan. The second is Onamuchi, which is another name for Okuninushi, the Izumo kami who "gave" Japan to the descendants of Amaterasu. Okuninushi is either the son of, or the 6th generation descendant of Susano, depending on which version of the myths you read. Most myths associated with Okuninushi take place in Inaba, the old name for Tottori. The third is Oyamazumi, the great Mountain God. He is the older brother of Amaterasu and Susano, and one of his daughters married Ninigi, Amaterasu's grandson who descended from heaven and took over Japan from Okuninushi. The son from this marriage was Jimmu, the mythical first emperor of Japan. The fourth is Uganomitama which is a kami of grains, and seems to be a female aspect of the similar Ukanomitama. Nowadays equated with Inari. A child of Susano and another daughter of Oyamazumi. Confused? There's more.....

 

The fifth is Oshihominomikoto, the father of Ninigi, and therefore the son of Amaterasu. Actually Oshihomi was one of 5 boys created by Susano which he gave to Amaterasu. She created 3 girls that she gave to Susano ( the Munakata sisters). The sixth is Hikohohodeminomikoto, a son of Ninigi. The seventh is Homusubi, the kami of fire, whose birth killed his mother Izanami. A sibling of Amaterasu, Susano, and Oyamazumi. Lots of incest in the genealogy of the kami!!!

Tottori Sand Dunes

This is a draincover from just outside Tottori City in Tottori Prefecture. It shows the major tourist attraction of the area, the Tottori Sand Dunes.

The dunes cover an area of almost 30 sq k, but is decreasing due to several man-made (read bureaucrat-made) factors. Often referred to as desert, this is simply not true as there is too much rainfall.

The dunes were formed by a combination of ocean currents and prevailing winds. The sand was originally the Chugoku Mountains to the south.

The dunes get about 2 million visitors a year, mostly Japanese. Very early in the morning is the best chance of seeing the ripples in the sand before they are wiped out by the hordes of tourist tracks.

The highest dunes are about 90m, and do offer nice views over the coast.

Kitsune of Saijo Inari

Kitsune, foxes, are the messengers of the kami Inari, so statues of them can be found at all Inari shrines and temples. Like Komainu, there are a variety of different designs and styles.
All of these photos are from Saijo Inari in Okayama.

Most kitsune statues are carved in stone, but here there were many large ones of clay. I believe they are known as Bizen style.

There were a pair of strange looking ones made of concrete!!

Often the kitsune will have a scroll in its mouth. The scroll contains wisdom.

Occasionally there will also be komainu as well as kitsune.

Small ceramic kitsune are left as offerings, along with sake (omiki)

The Love Shrine

Tucked away behind the famous Kiyomizudera Temple in the hills of Kyoto lies a small but very popular shrine, Jishu Shrine, known locally as the Love Shrine.

Here you can buy all manner of charms and amulets to aid in finding the love of your life.

There are also a pair of "love stones" set in the ground. If you touch one and then walk towards the second one with your eyes closed and successfully reach it you will be lucky in love.

The main kami is Okuninushi who nowadays is known as the kami of love and relationships. There is also an Inari shrine .

The shrine was built by Tokugawa Iemitsu in 1633.

Nagashibina: Origin of Hina Dolls

This is one of the more than 1000 Hina dolls on display at the Nagashibina Doll Museum in Mochigase Town, Tottori



Nagashibina refers to a festival that was once common throughout Japan but is now only celebrated in a handful of places, Mochigase being one of them.




These are some of the dolls used in the festival. Based, like much of Japanese ancient religion, on Taoist rituals, the dolls are akin to scapegoats, bad luck, impurity, sin, etc being carried away by the dolls as they float down river to the sea.




The festival takes place at the end of March, but if you can't attend it the museum has displays showing the festival, including this tableau with dolls.



There are also life-size tableaux showing Hina Matsuri.

With over 1,000 dolls on display it is easy to spend several hours in the museum.



For some reason I was more drawn to the almost two dimensional paper dolls rather than the more intricate (and expensive) dolls.



If you are interested in dolls I would suspect it is well worth a visit, though like many of the more interesting sites in japan it is nowhere near Tokyo or a Shinkansen station. Mochigase is located on a local rail line south of Tottori City. Entrance to the museum is a mere 300yen.

Hakata Port Tower

This was originally known as the Fukuoka Tower, but was renamed Hakata Port Tower when the new Fukuoka Tower was built.

It was built in 1964 and is 103 meters tall with an observation deck at 73 meters.

It was designed by Tachu Naito who designed many TV towers in Japan including Tokyo Tower.

Its open every day of the year and entrance to the observation deck with a decent 360 degree view is free.

A new red hanya mask

In the months of December and January there is almost nothing to do in the garden, and with more than enough firewood for this winter I have had enough "free" time to finally get round to finishing some masks.

Red hanya masks exist in other parts of the country, but I have never seen one in an Iwami Kagura dance.

There was a program on NHK a few days ago that included an interview with a master maskmaker from Hamada, and onbe thing he said was that if a mask was meant to be scary, then make it scary. That's what I have tried to do here....

More komainu of Kunisaki

This wooden komainu was in the museum at Usa Jingu. It is a type of komainu that is no longer as common as the stone ones found at the entrances to shrines and temples. If a shrine has a Zuijinmon, an entrance gate with pairs of zuijin (guardian statues) there will often be a small wooden komainu with them.

The most common komainu now are the stone ones found along the entranceways. These are mostly from the Edo-period.

Here is an excellent paper on different komainu styles. The author discusses many of the different styles and their geographic ranges, as well as laments modern japans drive towards national homogenity which is seeing one, modern, national style of komnainu increasing.

For me, the diversity is what is fascinating.

All of these komainu were found on the Kunisaki Peninsular of Northern Kyushu.

The other place to see komainu is carved into the beams of shrines and temples.

Vacation 2010 Day 14: Pendennis Castle

Falmouth was the first place I lived in Cornwall, and I ended up spending more than ten years there and in the surrounding area. It had been about twenty years since I had lived there, so I was very interested to see if much had changed. The first place I headed to was Pendennis Castle.

Built in the 1540's, Pendennis Castle and its sister St Mawes Castle were built to protect the narrow entrance to Falmouth Harbour and Carrick Roads, one of the largest natural harbours in the world. Built under orders of Henry VIII in expectation of an attack by the French and Spanish, which never materialized, the castle played a part in the English Civil War and was one of the last Royalist hold-outs.

From the castle one can look down on the Falmouth Hotel, a railway hotel built after the train line came to Falmouth from Truro. I worked at the hotel as a night porter when I was a student. Spent most of my time in the hotel swimming pool and writing my thesis. My kind of job.

Looking back over Falmouth, little seemed to have changed.

The castle itself is not so big, but with several narrow staircases and narrow windows the combination of stone, light and shadow remained evocative. Disappointing was that one floor had been set up with cannons and mannequins and with fake smoke, flashing red lights, and a pre-recorded soundtrack the disneyfication of history and culture seems to be growing.

All around the headland and castle are benches to sit on and enjoy the expansive views up and down the coast and inland as far as the China Clay pits up around St. Austell. I miss benches here in Japan. One of the first things I noticed when moving here was the lack of places to sit in public. My first thought was that sitting was not good for the economy. Waste of time. Should be either working or shopping. Not sure my thought has changed after all these years.