Shioya Oji Shrine

 

Shioya Town, now art of Gobo City, lies on the southside of the Hidaka River on the West coast of the Kii Peninsula in Wakayama.

The shrine is said to have been founded in 805 by a man who began the salt-producing and salt trade that the town is named after.

In the 11th century, when imperial pilgrimages to Kumano were at their height, 99 subsidiary shrines called "oji" were established along the route.

Shioya Oji Shrine was in the first group of seven Oji established and so is considered one of the oldest and most important. Yesterday I had stopped at Kirimie Oji, and the day before at Takajiri Oji, another two from the first group of seven.

The shrine was also known as "Beautiful Oji Shrine", with two theories as to why. One suggests that the statue of Amaterasu enshrined here ( as a form of Dainichi Buddha) was particularly beautiful. Another that the beautiful sea views from the shrine inspired many songs and poems by courtiers who stayed here.

There are numerous secondary shrines in the grounds, including an Ebisu, an Inari, a Kotohira, and a Susa. The previous post in this series on the Kumano Kodo and Saigoku pilgrimage was From Kirime Oji to Tsui Oji.

Hoko-in Temple 70 Kyushu pilgrimage

 

A statue of Kobo Daishi, the focus of the Kyushu 108 sacred sites pilgrimage, stands outside temple 70, Hoko-in near Arita in Saga.

I reached it on day 70 of my walk along the pilgrimage, a curious coincidence.

A large Bokefuji Kannon statue stands in the grounds. An increasingly popular form of Kannon, prayed to for protection against dementia and senility.

The honzon is a "secret" 11-faced Kannon, and the temple is also part of the Kyushu Kannon pilgrimage.

The temple was founded in the early Edo period when a monk came down from nearby Mount Kurokami.,A shugendo center, and home to temple 69 which I will be visiting tomorrow.

With the ban on Shuigendo in the early Meiji period the temple fell into disuse and disrepair, but was revived in 1968. The Daishi statue in the Daishi Hall was brought from another Shugendo mountain temple, underscoring the historical connection to Yamabushi.

The temple unusually has a Mizuko hall as well as the main hall and Daishi hall.

This was to be the only temple of the day for me as I spent the rest of the day as a tourist exploring Arita.

The previous temple was number 79 Zenpukuji.

Shoboji Temple & Seiganji Temple 30 & 31 on Shodoshima pilgrimage

 

After a couple of small, hermitage-type "temples", number 30, Shoboji, in the small coastal settlement of Yoshino on the Mito peninsula, was quite substantial though there was no-one home.

It is said the temple was founded by Kobo Daishi himself in the early 9th century.

The main hall is said to be about 250-300 years old.

The honzon is a small statue of Dainichi dating back to the Heian period, possibly even the 10th century. It is one of the oldest Dainichi statues in all of Kagawa. Flanking the Dainich is a Tamonten and a Jikokuten from the same period although these two are believed to have been carved locally.

Not far away, around a small headland, and in the next coastal settlement, is Seiganji, temple 31.

This is even more substantial and with a bell tower gate dating back to the Edo period.

The most noticeable thing here though is the massive Sago palm that almost obscures the view of the main building. probably about 1,000 years old, though some claim it to be 1,600 years old, 7.5 meters high, and with a trunk diameter of 8 meters.

It is said the temple was founded by Gyoki in the first half of the 8th century. While sleeping at this spot he is said to have a dream of Myoken, the Buddhist version of the North Star deity and a very, very popular cult in Japan.

Believed to be Taoist in origin and brought to Japan by Korean immigrants, esoteric Buddhism adopted the deity. Right next door is a Myoken Shrine. Thousands of Myoken shrines were renamed and the deity renamed as a Shinto kami in the early Meiji period. One possible site of origin in Japan is the Yatsushiro Shrine in southern Kyushu. That post also links to a favorite Myoken temple of mine, Nose Myokensan near Osaka.

The main hall is on the hillside above the main temple grounds. It was built in 1933 out of Taiwanese Cypress and features many carvings. The honzon is a standing Amida Nyorai. Also in the main hall are a Senju Kannon, a Myoken Bosatsu, and a Fudo Myoo.

Leading up to the main hall is a delightful Edo-period rock garden. In front of the garden is a large flat stone that if you stand on it the North Star is visible directly above the main hall/

The previous post was on temples 28 nd 29.

Hiradoguchi to Imari. Day 69 walking around Kyushu

 

Friday March 21st, 2014. A walk from  Hiradoguchi Station to Imari Station

Today’s lengthy leg of my walk will include just one temple and other than that I have no idea of what I will see or encounter. Sometimes there are things marked on the maps that I know I will want to check out, but there are no tourist sites of any note in this section. The road is a standard, rural, 2 lane road not choked with traffic but not quiet.

I stop in at a few roadside shrines to see if there is anything to see. Before I started walking pilgrimage routes I used to walk around the countryside visiting shrines. In the truest sense of the word that was pilgrimage, but now when I walk the Buddhist pilgrimages it is still the shrines I pass along the way that interest me most. The road reaches the coast and passes by numerous small coves.

As I approach Matsuura I look down on a huge power station. Like many, it is fueled by coal, and even though Kyushu has reserves of coal in the ground, the domestic coal industry was closed down in the middle of the last century in favor of cheap oil imports. Now the coal is mostly imported from Australia, and there are acres and acres of coal laid out here in neat piles with conveyor belts and automatic chutes.

A little further towards the town I check for the local manholes. I make it a habit to check out the manhole covers in places I am visiting. They often have designs that feature things of local importance. Here in Matsuura the design features kangaroos, koalas, and the Australian flag. Matsuura is twinned with Mackay in Queensland, where the coal for the power station comes from. I get off the main road which bypasses the town and take the main road through the town. Like most rural towns it appears halfway to being a ghost town with half the commercial properties closed up. After Matsuura the road goes around a headland and there are great views out to a scattering of islands

 On the outskirts of the village of Imafuku I get off the main road and head towards today’s only pilgrimage temple. I pass a torii with steps leading up the hill, and as the temple is on the other side of the hill I presume that there will be a path from the shrine to the temple. There usually is as you often find a shrine and a temple right next to each other because they used to be just one place. Sure enough, the path up to the shrine and then the path from the shrine to the temple are lined with red-bibbed Buddhist statues. The shrine itself is just a simple wooden building with almost no ornamentation, more of a shed really, but the view over the rooftops of the village out to sea was worth the climb.

Temple 79, Zenpukuji, is a small, village temple, and there are a constant stream of people arriving and leaving. I suddenly remember that today is the spring equinox, a national holiday in Japan. The 7 days centering on the equinox is called higan, or Ohigan, and like Obon in the summer is a time for visiting the graves of your ancestors and for other acts of memorialization. The priests wife is busy flitting between the visitors and tidying up around the grounds so we just exchange polite greetings. The ceiling of the main hall has been repainted in the not-too-distant past. Each of the small wooden squares is painted with different flowers.

I head off down the coast which now veers towards the south. After a half hour of walking, I pass back into Saga Prefecture. The bay gradually narrows until Imari. Imari, like Arita is famous for ceramics, specifically porcelain, and on the main street leading to the station are a couple of huge porcelain figures.

The sun is setting when I reach the station but I find I have a little wait until my train to Sasebo so I wander near the station but there is little of interest other than a huge wedding chapel built in European style. The last two days have been long but at least by basing myself in Sasebo I have been able to leave my heavy pack there and just use a day pack. I'm sure that carrying a full pack I would not have been able to cover the distance I have.

Most of Day 68 was sent on Hirado Island, which I cover in this brief guide.

Sakura Shrine & Kojima Takanori

 

Sakura Shrine lies along the old Iumo Kaido to the west of what is now Tsuyama City. As I entered I got the feeling that this would turn out to be a "political" shrine from the early days of State Shinto.

I was right. It was established in 1869 and enshrined Emperor Go-Daigo and also Koji Takanori.

The new religion of State Shinto was an attempt to create a "unified nation" of Japan primarily through the symbol of the Imperial system. This was when lots of emperors had shrines built to them, and historians went through history looking for any figures or events that would contribute towards the narrative of an imperial tradition.

Go-Daigo was much revered during the Meiji period because in 1331 he attempted to overthrow the military government of the Kamakura Bafuku and  " restore" direct imperial rule. His plot was discovered and so was deposed and exiled to the Oki Islands.

The route of his journey to exile was along the Izumo Kaido and the military convoy escorting him stayed the night at the fortified residence of the military governor of the area, which is where Sakura Shrine was built.

Koji Takanori was loyal to Go-Daigo and hatched a plan to rescue him, however, his plan was not well thought out and most of his soldiers were scattered over a wide area, unsure of the route the convoy was taking.

Takanori was able to sneak into the property of the military governor, but with too few men was unable to execute any kind of rescue.

He did however carve a ten-character verse to Go-Daigo into the trunk of a cherry tree in the compound, hence the name Sakura shrine.

Like most of the state shinto shrines I found it rather sterile, though it is quite like a largish park. There are numerous shrines to Go-Daigo and also quite a few to Takanori scattered across Japan, but all of them date from the late 19th century.

This was day 5 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon pilgrimage and the previous post was on Takano Shrine, the Ninomiya of the province.