Views From Mount Bishamon

 

Mount Bishamon is the 177 meter high mountain that forms a headland into Hakata Bay.

The okunoin, inner sanctuary, of Seiganji Temple down below, is at the peak and enshrines Bishamonten.

I am guessing the mountain was named Bishamon before the temple was founded in the 12th century, but maybe not.

There is a scenic viewpoint that has great views  to the north, west, and south, though views east over Fukuoka City are blocked.

There is a very narrow road up to it, or a walking trail from the temple.

There are expansive views looking over the Itoshima Plain that I had walked across earlier in the day. The photo below shows Nokonoshima, the island where the famed Gold Seal of Na was discovered.

The previous post was on Seiganji Temple below.

Itokoku History Museum

 

The Itokoku History Museum is somewhat larger than your average local history museum as it is in an area with many, many important, ancient archeological sites.

Being the closest part of the Japanese islands to mainland Asia, where people, culture, and technology were introduced from, northern Kyushu is in many ways the cradle of Japanese culture and history.

Not far from here in Karatsu is the site of the earliest evidence of rice-paddies in Japan, and the earliest records of Japan from China mention northern Kyushu. Close to this museum is the Hirabaru Burial Site, and ancient tomb from where many of the items in the museum has been exacavated.

Bronze mirrors are an important archeological marker in ancient Japan. Originally based in Daoist magic, in Japan they are  seen as important status-markers. The most famous bronze mirrors are a group of 100 given by the Chinese Emperor to the legendary Japanese Queen Himiko. She would then have given on many of these to important figures who supported her, and so on. Eventually these bronze mirrors were also produced in Japan.

In Japanese archeology, the presence of mirrors in grave goods is a marker of the importance of the person buried. The bigger the mirrors, and the quantity of mirrors, indicating the status. At the nearby Hirabaru site they discovered not only the largest number of mirrors at a single site, but also the biggest mirror ever found. In recent years a bigger mirror has been discovered near Nara, but it seems to be most unusual. What is clear is that the "king" who lived here was very, very powerful.

There is some English with the displays, and a lot of the museum is aimed at children, but if you are interested in ancient Japanese history, the museum is worth a visit.

The previous post in this series on my walk along the Kyushu Pilgrimage was on nearby Sazareishi Shrine.

Manhole Rice

The most common motif by far  used in the designs on manhole covers in japan is the cherry blossom. Considering the central place occupied by rice in Japanese identity it is surprising that it does not appear more often than it does. This first one is from Mizuho up in the mountains near where Iwami meet Hiroshima.

I found this second one in the village of Koshita south of Usa in northern Kyushu.

Also in northern Kyushu, but on the opposite side in Fukuoka, this one is from Itoshima, one of the very ancient centers of early Japanese intereactions with Asia.

The final one is from near Kurayoshi in Tottori and it shows a farm woman using a senbakoki, a threshing machine with a steel "comb" that separates the the easr and grains from the stalks. Prior to its invention in the 17th Century a tool made from a piece of split bamboo, a kokibashi, was used.