Hojoji Temple number 46 on the Kyushu Pilgrimage

Leaving Satsumasendai I followed the Sendai river upstream into the mountains until reaching the town of Satsuma. Placenames can be quite confusing in Japan with boundaries being redrawn and places given new names. Satsuma was originally a samurai domain that roughly corresponds with what is now Kagoshima Prefecture. At the same time that prefectures were created something called Satsuma-gun was created. This could be seen as a district or county.

Much later many of the towns and villages within Satsuma-gun were amalgamated together to form Satsumsendai City. This left just 2 small towns in the mountains as Satsuma-gun so they were renamed Satsuma Town. This is where I reached temple 46.

Architecturally it was nothing special but it did have a lot of statues, including one of Kobo Daishi the founder of Shingon. He is the focus of this particular pilgrimage.

While documenting my pilgrimages with my camera I sometimes  forget to just look for the "abstract" beauty of light and shadow that used to be a bigger preoccupation of my eyes.

I did encounter 5 different statues of Fudo Myo here, so that is worthy of a separate post.