A Walk in Rural Kochi

 

Late November, and on day 17 of my walk around Shikoku on the Ohenro pilgrimage I have left the Wakamiya Hachimangu shrine connected to the great Shikoku warlord Chosokabe Motochika and am heading across country to Tanemaji Temple 34.

This, for me, was the essence of the pilgrimage. The pilgrimage temples supply a structure and a route, but for me it is the space between the temples, the unknown expanses of mostly rural Japan that most visitors miss. I was seeking out the shrines and histories that don't make it into the tourist brochures.

I had been doing this for years, initially exploring the area around my home, gradually going further and further afield until I knew all the back roads and what could be found. I got into a pattern of studying maps and finding all the shrines and then working out a walking route that would take me to them all.

The impetus was to learn, to try to understand all the whys, why were things the way they were. To learn about the natural environment and its ecology and how that influenced the people, and to learn the political and religious history and how that shaped the place to be in the form it is now.

The Shikoku Ohenro was my first time on a "Buddhist" pilgrimage. I figured that dressed in pilgrims garb on a well established walking route I was less likely to be stopped by the cops, something that happened far too often to me and had a depressing effect on me.

The first photo is a small, local shrine, a Kamado Shrine. There were numerous kamado shrines in the area, indicating what I was not sure. The head shrine is in Dazaifu in northern Kyushu and was established after Japan's unsuccessful invasion of the Korean peninsula in the late 7th century.

photo 2 is a heron, a fairly common bird around rivers and rice paddies. Photo 3 is a small man-made pond, vital for irrigation for rice paddies before the modern world that nowadays uses a lot of electrical pumping.

 

Photo 4 is a small park of some kind, and photo 5 a gourd water bottle hanging on a farm outbuilding. A far cry from the ubiquitous plastic water bottles of now.

Phots 6, 7, and 8, are another small, local shrine, Mori Shrine. One of the things that fascinates me is the diversity of such things as the komainu guardian statues, which nowadays are tending more and more to a homogenous, "national" style, but which historically were quite varied.

photo 8 is the Kodono River I had to cross, and the finalthree photos are of an unusual memorial below a small local shrine. It seems to be dedicated to the ascension of Hirohito in 1926 when the era name changed from Taisho to Showa. Architecturally it is curious as it looks like some kind of tomb.

The previous post in this series looking at what is between the temples on the Ohenro was Wakamiya Hachimangu Shrine.

Birds along the Yamaguchi Coast

This past Spring while walking the Chugoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage I took a walk along the Japan Sea coast of Yamaguchi,  It's a particularly fine stretch of coast with azure seas, outcroppings and cliffs, small islands and a lot of small fishing villages. Here are some of the birds I saw. The first is a heron. Sagi in Japanese, maybe its a Grey heron, maybe a Great Blue......

Lots of cormorants. I am guessing that they are Temmink's Cormorants, the most common kind, known as Umi-u in Japanese, though there are some other species which visit during migration. The difference among the onbes in the photo may be due to age and gender.

Lots of Kites, Black-eared Kite being the common species here. Known as Tombi in Japanese.

More cormorants.

This is, I believe, a Blue Rock Thrush, but I have no idea what it is called in Japanese.

Great Blue Herons

I am neither a twitcher nor an ornithologist, so some of these may be Grey Herons rather than Great Blues. Though, like all wild animals, they are naturally skittish around people, many live in urban settings and will allow you to get closer to take photos.... this one was in downtown Kurashiki.

With their long, spindly legs they are well adapted to wade in the shallow waters of ponds and rivers to find their staple... fish. This one is in the pond at the Tenmangu Shrine in Nagaoka.

Known as sagi in Japanese, they feature in many poems and paintings.

Graceful in flight, their wingspan can get close to 2 meters..

This one was in a drainage ditch in Tsuwano, literally a few meters away from where the Heron dance was being performed.

Heron Dance (Sagimai)

Just got back from Tsuwano where I watched the Sagimai, the Heron Dance. Tomorrow I will post details and photos, but for now here is a short video.

There was also the Heron Chick Dance, of much more recent vintage.

What was intriguing was just before the dances were to begin a real heron landed and strutted around seemingly quite immune to the dozens of photographers taking its photo.

Kurashiki Heron