Floral Interlude

I'm off wandering in Kyushu for a while so will not have chance to post for a while so I leave you with a floral interlude.

I am poor at flower recognition and naming so I won't even bother....

Carbon Emissions

Japan has recently revised its target for reduction of carbon-emissions in its drive to reduce pollution and global warming.

The original target was for a 25% reduction over 1990 levels.

The new target is a 3% INCREASE over 1990 levels.....

Since 1990 Japan has moved a lot of its polluting industry offshore, mostly to China and SE Asia, and the population of Japan is shrinking, so I guess the increase must be down to more consumption...

Fukushima, the scapegoat for anything negative that happens in Japan nowadays, is being blamed.

Two Tanuki

For a couple of months I have been enjoying the daily visit to my backyard by the local badger.

A couple of weeks ago there was an enormous fight right outside my window. It was dark and the weeds were high so I was unable to see what was fighting.

Since then the badger has not been seen, but each afternoon or early evening we get a visit from a pair of tanuki. I'm guessing it was they who fought the badger and won, though I am surprised. I would have thought the badger was stronger, but the tanuki are faster and there are two of them....

I'm guessing they are a mating pair as fall is the mating season. In English they are called racoon dogs. They look a little like racoons but are unrelated. They are related to dogs and foxes.

They are common to see, though its unusual to get to see them so close. They are the most common form of roadkill.

Iha Shrine

Walking out of the village of Naoe towards the train station there is yet another shrine. Iha Shrine is recorded in the Izumo Fudoki so is therefore at least 1300 years old. It was until 1750 on top of Mount Iwano but then relocated down to its present location.

The map shows it as Iha Shrine, as does the signboard, but the new stone marker in front says KamiNaoe Hachimagu. I can find no explanation.

At some point in the not too distant past the whole shrine has been reconstructed. The main kami of the shrine is Okuninushi.

There are several smaller shrines collected together in the grounds but they are listed as unknown kami.

There is also the almost obligatory Inari shrine....

Ebisu Shrine, Naka, Tokushima

After coming down from Tairyuji I stopped in at the local Ebisu Shrine. The villagers were cleaning up after the flood caused by the typhoon the day before, hence the pile of rice.

There were some enormous Giant Cedars lining the path into the shrine and a statue of Chosokabe the warlord who ruled over all of Shikoku for a while before Hideyoshi sent his armies in.

There was no signboard so I could not find out anything about what secondary shrines and kami there were, other than the obvious main kami Ebisu, no equated with Kotoshironushi. There was a zuijinmon with a fine pair of zuijin.

The shrine was built on the site of the former Niu castle, though I guess it must have been quite a small and unimportant castle.

Kotohira-gu, Izumo bunsha

After visiting Rendaiji, the sixth temple on the Izumo 33 Kannon pilgrimage I headed to the nearest train station in Naoe to head home, stopping in at the Konpira Shrine in the middle of the village.

Its now called a Kotohira-gu, which was the new name given to the kami Konpira in the Meiji era to disassociate it from its Buddhist identity. The main Konpira Shrine on Shikoku was one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations of the Edo period with millions of pilgrims travelling to Shikoku and often bringing back the "spirit" of the kami to enshrine in their local villages. This one in Naoe however was not established until 1880.

At the same time as renaming the kami it was given new identities more suitable for the national shinto that was in the process of being created. Hirata Atsutane had a hand in establishing the "true" identity of Kotohira as a manifestation of Okuninushi (Omononushi) and also the 12th Century Emperor Sutoku.

There are several smaller shrines in the grounds including a Harae-do, a Manasa shrine, a Hachiman shrine and this Inari Shrine.

Noma Hachimangu

Coming down the hill after visiting Hanya-in, the second temple on the Kyushu 108 temple pilgrimage, I took shelter from the drizzle in a small, local Hachiman shrine.

There was no signboard so I could find out little of its history, except that it is a branch of the Usa Hachimangu. two thirds of all the Hachiman shrines in Japan are branches of Iwashimizu Hachimangu near Kyoto, itself a branch of Usa Hachimangu. As such it enshrines Ojin, his mother, Jingu, and his wife Tamayorihime.

There was a secondary shrine to Tenjin in the grounds, and lots of nice trees :)

Hanging from the ceiling was a "zodiac" painting depicting the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, a common artwork in both shrines and temples.

A fairly typical small village shrine now in the middle of a large city.