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.

Kumano Shrine Yoshii

 

The Kumano Shrine in Yoshii, Nagasaki, is a fairly typical small, rural shrine. Set on a small, flat area within a forest clearing, it is reached by several long flights of stairs.

Architecturally it is really just a utilitarian shed housing a small hokora-type shrine with a small altar set up in front of it. However, it looked as if the building had been wider at some point.

There may have been some stone komainu, and the remains of some stone lanterns could be seen, however on the altar was a pair of small, wooden komainu.

Being a Kumano Shrine it enshrines the Kumano Gongen, the collective name for the kami enshrined at the three Kumano shrines in southern Wakayama. There are about 3,000 branch shrines of Kumano in Japan, with three being within just a few kilometers of this one.

I visited in late March 2014 on day 68 of my walk around Kyushu following the Shingon Kyushu 108 temple pilgrimage dedicated to Kobo Daishi. This was the final leg that would see me finishing the pilgrimage ten days later. First I must visit Hirado Island, then go back into Saga prefecture before heading to Munakata in Fukuoka. The previous post in this series was on the shrines I visited on day 67.

Shrines of Day 67

 

For many pilgrims, I believe the main priority is to get from temple to temple. The temples are the focus. For me, however, the temples were just reference points on an exploratory walk. The sites between the temples were just as important, and I tried to stop in at every single shrine I passed, both to learn any interesting local history and myths, and to find unique and interesting art.

On Day 67 of my walk around the Shingon Kyushu pilgrimage, I started the day in Sasebo, Nagasaki, visiting a pilgrimage temple then headed north out of town to the Ainoura River valley. These first four photos are from Nakazato Hachiman Shrine, a fairly standard village shrine to Hachiman, by one count the most common shrine in Japan.

With its Hizen-style torii, and modern komainu, there were no surprises here. Like most village shrines numerous smaller shrines had been brought here from neighboring areas in the early part of the 20th century.

I visited nearby temple number 74, Tozenji before heading on up the valley. In Tabarucho I stopped in at Norito Shrine. A little further I saw the unusual shimenawa of Yodohime Shrine.

The next four photos are from my next stop, an unnamed Inari Shrine.

If you include small, roadside shrines without buildings, then Inari, rather than Hachiman, becomes the most common shrine in Japan.

The vast majority of Inari shrines only date back to the Edo period when Inari became so popular.

Continuing to climb my next stop was Kamiari Shrine.

There is absolutely no info on this shrine which was obviously more substantial in earlier times, but now is just a small, stone honden.

It enshrines Amaterasu.

Not far from Kamiari Shrine I spent quite a bit of time exploring Saikoji Temple, number 73 on the pilgrimage with a notable Giant Fudo statue. I had now climbed to more than 300 meters above sea level and while heading to a mountain tunnel that would take me over to the next valley I could see an Oyamazumi Shrine in tye distance set in a tell-tale grove of trees.

Dropping down into and then slowly descending the Sasa River Valley my first stop was another Oyamazumi Shrine, this one with a unique old-growth ecosystem. This was once a coal mining area and after a brief stop at the local coal mine museum I visited the last pilgrimage temple of the day, Saifukuji Temle with its cave shrine.

I carried on down the valley and just before reaching Yoshii Station and the train back into Sasebo I stopped in at a very small shrine. I have no idea of the shrines name as I couldnt read the eroded kanji on the torii, and can not find it on the map, but it did have a nice pair of komainu.

If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy the post on shrines of day 66.

Yodohime Shrine Shimenawa & Yamodo Festival

 

When I saw the shimenawa on the torii to Yodohime Shrine I knew it was unusual, but only when I did the research for this post did I realize its significance. The very small, local shrine lies at the border of Matsubara and Yamine, in the mountains north of Sasebo, Nagasaki. The shrine was established in the first years of the 11th century and enshrines Toyotamahime, the grandmother of the mythical first emperor Jimmu who features in the Hyuga Myth Cycle.

The Yamodo Matsuri takes place every new year, now set as the end of January, and culminates in the shimenawa being replaced with a new one, made by the parishioners out of rice straw from the previous harvest. Yamodo is derived from yama udo which means mountain man and refers to a kind of marebito, an idea of an outsider as a god from another world. In this case it refers to the Yamanokami that descends from the mountains in the Spring to become the Tanokami, god of the rice paddies, during the summer and then returns to the mountains after the harvest.

In the Yamodo festival 2 young men, one from each village, whose parents are still living and healthy, undergo various purifications and then act as the yama udo in various ways during the festival. The festival is now registered as an Intangible Cultural property of the prefecture.

There is a 23-minute video on the matsuri, in Japanese, on YouTube, if you are interested. The previous post was on Saifukuji Temple and its cave.

Kifune Shrine Amagasaki

 

The Kifune Shrine in Amagasaki is sandwiched between the Hanshin Railway Line and the Hanshin Expressway in the Nishihinmachi district. A branch of the famous Kibune Shrine north of Kyoto, it was originally located within Amagasaki Castle but was relocated here when the castle was renovated during the Edo period.

As a branch of Kibune, the main deity enshrined here is Takaokami, however, 2 other Kyoto kami, from the 2 Kamo shrines are also enshrined.

There are half a dozen subsidiary shrines in the grounds, the largest of which is Shimanami Inari. It was also originally within Amagasaki Castle but was not moved here until 1869 when the castle was decommissioned and soon dismantled. 

Symbols of an American Football can be seen at the shrine because of the link to Kwansei Gakuin Fighters, a local university american football team. Since their founding in 1941 the team has been very successful except for one year when they ranked sixth, their worst ever ranking. That year no-one prayed for success at the shrine, so ever since they have not missed a year.

I was visiting at the end of my second day walking the Kinki Fudo Myo pilgrimage. The previous post was on crossing the Yodo River.