Kuroki Shrine & the Enshrinement of Regular Folk

 

Coming down from Tsuto Shrine, I pass through a small park before reaching the main road that goes over a small rise into Uyagawa.

A statue of some old guy wearing a suit with tails. Undoubtedly some minor, local elite working for the state, quite probably.y a mayor. During Meiji they became obsessed with making government officials into heroes.

Dikapidated, collapsing farm buildings are everywhere...In England you could sell this for big bucks and convert it into a luxury dwelling.

The Uyu River from where the town of Uyagawa gets its name. Between Hamada and Gotsu I think it is the biggest river.

On the bank of the river and close to Route 9, the national highway that is equivalent to the old Sanin-do, is Uyagawa Hachimangu.

Upriver a ways is the shrine  I am most interested in Kuroki Shrine. Enshrined here is a 19 year old, local maiden by the name of Kawakami Tsujuro. In 1725 she was working as a servant for a wealthy family further upriver in Arifuku.

Someone, it is not said who, built a weir upstream of the village and diverted the water to their paddies. The weir had guards suggesting it belonged to a powerful group. There was a drought and the village downstream had no water and was in danger of dying and losing their livestock.

Tsujuro damaged the weir allowing water to flow downstream and save her village. The guards pursued her and lopped off her head. The villagers found the head and enshrined it in what is now Kuroki Shrine.

This story fascinated me because in my area we also had a shrine for a peasant who stood up to authority and was executed. I had been interested in the enshrinement of the powerful. At the start of the Edo period Tokugawa Ieyasu had himself deified and enshrined, but I had not come across example of lesser people being enshrined.

Later, in the Meiji Period, many lower class people were enshrined as kami, most notably at Yasukuni where everyone who died fighting for the Emperor are enshrined. Also during early Meiji the government went on an orgy of enshrining anyone in history who could be perceived as being pro- the imperial system.

I often remark how well-kept the roadside altars are in Japan. While heading towards Ninomiya I passed this example which is the exception to the rule...

The previous post was on Tsuto Shrine and an associated legend.

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Tanoura Kannondo Temple 80 & Tanoura Yakushido Temple 59 Sasaguri Pilgrimage

 

A striking feature of temple 80, Tanoura Kannondo, is the Seigando Hall with around 300 small statues of a seated Kobo Daishi.

Temple 80, Tanoura Kannondo, and temple 59 Tanoura Yakushido, are located adjacent to each other.

Unfortunately there is very little in terms of dates and history.

As usual there are lots of Fudo Myoo statues as well as others....

The "main hall" is a small cave that was a sutra repository about 300 years ago.

The honzon is a Thousand-armed Kannon. There are numerous other Kannon statues at the temple.

There is one particularly fine, huge sugi tree.

A Benzaiten statue next to yet another Kannon statue....

Nest door is the Yakushi-do, temple 59....

A statue of Fujiki Tosukethe founder of the Sasaguri Pilgrimage. It is believed his hermitage was located near here.

There are also many Fudo statues here...

The honzon is a Yakushi Nyorai, commonly known as the Medicine Buddha.

The statue of Kobo Daishi with his dog relates to a legend that while travelling with his dog they were attacked by a wild boar and the dog dies defending Kobo Daishi.

I have not come across this story anywhere else so it may be a local story...

The previous post was on the nearby temple 30, Higyokudo.

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Hashi Beach, Harbour, & Tsuto Shrine

 

After leaving Kushiro, the old San-in Do is a narrow, single-lane road that runs near the rail line and  comes into the back of Hashi completely avoiding the new and busy Route 9

Home to a pretty good "Oceanarium", the beach is part of the Iwami Seaside Park and is very popular in summer.

At the far end of the beach is the tiny harbour for Hashi.

On the hillside up above the harbour is Tsuto Shrine.

This is the main shrine for the town, although just over a hundred years ago an Otoshi Shrine and an Inari Shrine were merged with it. It is yet another local shrine listed in the Engi Shiki.

It is believed that the ruling clan, an offshoot of the clan that colonized the Iwami coastal region in ancient times established a shrine to their ancestors here. Their ancestral deity was Komemochitsuki, and in some way he is connected with mochi rice cakes. They are connected to the clan who founded Kushiro Shrine, and the shrines down near Masuda.

This seems to be the eastern limit of their territory. They were obviously placed here by the Yamato as a check on the power of Izumo. Further East and into Izumo it seems the Mononobe were the clan sent for the same purpose.

In 889 the clan enshrined Tagorihime, the elder of the three Munakata, daughters of Susano.

A myth/legend has it that as a young girl  Tagorihime was too volatile even for Susano, so she was sent away and came ashore on Hashi Beach. A local couple raised here as their own. She never spoke.

Later, a signal fire lit to warn of an attack on Izumo by a "foreign" enemy, caused Tagorihime to reveal her true identity and a dream of Susano that if Tagorihime returned, Izumo would be successful in defeating the enemy. Tagorihime set off but her foster parents chased after her to stop her. She hid behind a rock at what is now a shrine in Gotsu. Her fraught foster parents passed by her and died on the slopes of Asari Fujisan, a coastal mountain near my place. Tagorihime reached Izumo and the enemy was defeated.

The oldest version of this story dates to the 15th century at Hinomisaki Shrine, though it is probably much older. It is said that this shrine  and the one in Gotsu where the rock is were both territories of Hinomisaki Shrine.

Around the main shrine building are an Ebisu Shrine, a Konpira Shrine, a Yasaka Shrine, and a Tenmangu Shrine. The small shrine slightly above the main shrine is believed to enshrine Komemochizuki.

The previous post in this series on the Chugoku and the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimages was on Majima and the Benten Shrine I stopped in at on my walk to start heading up the coast again from Hashi.

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Inside HITOHAKU

 

HITOHAKU in Sanda, Hyogo is a huge natural history museum.

I covered the exterior architecture in the last post in this series.

In English, it is called the Museum of Nature and Human Activities.

When I visited in 2017 there was little information in English, but now the whole museum is covered with smartphone-readable info in multiple languages.

It is not just a museum,but also includes several research facilities.

The museum's collections are staggering, with 152,000 geological items and more than 2,000,000 biological specimens.

Included in that are 1.3 million insects, 68,000 animals, and 641,000 plants.

The museum is spread over four floors and includes sections on the natural history of Hyogo, and the always-popular-with-kids dinosaur exhibits.

The human impact on nature is also covered.

I found the msueum and its displays surprisingly interesting, and good value. The most expensive entry fee is 200 yen.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Kinki Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage was on the wonderful exterior of the museum.

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