Watari to Shikaga Along the Gonokawa River

 

After visiting the Hachiman shrine I carry on up the riverside road through what used to be called Watari but is now just considered Kawagoe.

It used to be a sizable settlement, having a village shrine and a couple of temples.

Now, at least half the properties are abandoned...

Across the river on the opposite bank is the former Mizunokuni Water Museum.

It has been closed now for several years, around the time that the rail line closed. Even though it is on the main road it never had many visitors and I am amazed is stayed open as long as it did. many of my older posts about it no longer have photos, but this one does.

Though we are about 25 kilometers from the mouth of the river, it is still fairly wide at this point.

There may well have been a trail along this section before the railway was built in the  1930"s, but the road, as narrow as it is, was only built at the same time as the train line. Traffic of any kind is very rare, usually a small post office or delivery van a couple of times a day... that it...

Sections of the bank are so narrow that tunnels were necessary.

I am amazed many of the roadside altars are regularly supplied with fresh flowers. As the few elderly inhabitants die off they too will become abandoned.

The next settlement of any size, with a new, concrete bridge across the river, a big shrine, a couple of temples, and the abandoned railway station, is Shikaga. Here I will take a  few kilometers detour  inland.

The previous post was on the Hachiman Shrine in Kawagoe.

Abandoned Mikoshi

Mikoshi are sacred palanquins or portable shrines used for transporting kami most often seen during matsuris when the kami are paraded around the local community once a year.

It is believed their origin lies in when the great kami Hachiman was carried by palanquin from Usa in Kyushu to Todaiji in Nara in the middle of the eighth century.

When not being used the Mikoshi are normally kept in a special storeroom though it is not uncommon for them to be put on display at New Year when many visitors come to the shrine.

In the heavily depopulated rural areas of Japan many shrines are now virtually unused and the mikoshi are no longer used. These photos were taken in a small shrine in the mountains of yamaguchi Prefecture.

Hotel Eden

This abandoned " Rabu Hoteru", love hotel, is on Route 9 just outside Yamaguchi City. For anyone who doesn't know about love hotels I recommend a brand new book by Ed Jacob, Love Hotels: An inside look at Japan's sexual playground. At $10 to download a pdf it's certainly affordable.

Obviously, for someone at least, "Eden" is located in the Mediterranean (or a Mexican shanty town).

In my area all the love hotels are located outside of the towns, and while a few are painted a bright color to make them visible, many are simple, innocuous, drab places composed of individual "cabins" more akin to motels. There are none of the outrageous architectural palaces that one sees in the cities.

Like most Japanese construction, they are cheaply built, and combined with japan's humidty and precipitation it doesn't take long for buildings to become derelict and decompose.

The sign tells that the room is temporarily unavailable due to it being cleaned and prepared for the next customers.

Takahirayama Shrine, Miyoshi

When I go walking and exploring I usually follow a route that takes me from shrine to shrine. Sometimes, in remote areas, the maps are outdated and the shrines no longer exist. This shrine is close to the center of Miyoshi, and was abandoned. The torii had been taken down, the shintai removed from the hondens, but the buildings were still intact, though boarded up.

I checked on Google maps last night, and now these structures have been razed. I haven't been able to find out why. Sometimes shrines are moved to make way for construction of roads, tunnels, etc but this was not the case here. It was a fairly substantial shrine too, with several secondary shrines in the grounds.