Mishima Shrine & Misosogi Shrine

Mishima

I was excited to start day 2 of my walk along the Kyushu Fudo Myoo pilgrimage. A good chunk of the days walking would be along mountain trails. After waking early at my stopover at Nameshi Dam, I walked across the dam itself and headed into the woods.

The first seven temples of the pilgrimage are all located in the Kunisaki Penisula, but to visit them I decided to walk the Kunisakihanto Minemichi Long Trail, a route that closely follows the old yamabushi pilgrimage route that circumnavigates the peninsula. This was my third visit to Kunisaki and I would be revisiting some sites but visiting many more for the first time.

Not far into the forest I come upon the first stop, a shrine set against a cliff with the honden and a secondary shrine both under a rock overhang. The map says this is Mishima Shrine, though there is no information about it.

I am very fond of shrines that cannot be accessed by motor vehicle. From here an ancient road leads up a little higher before crossing over a pass and dropping into the next valley.

The Kunisaki Peninsular is a roughly circular volcanic cone, and from the central high point a series of 28 valleys raditae out. What this means is that to walk around the peninsula involves an awful lot of ups and downs.

As I approach a qiute large temple I first pass by a substantial shrine. My map says this is Misosogi Shrine, but another says it is Choanji Rokusho Shrine. Choanji is the temple nearby connected to this shrine, and Rokusho is the name of several shrines in the area, related I am fairly sure, to  Rokugo Manzan, the Tendai- Hachiman syncretic cult that formed the areas unique religious landscape.

Koinobori