Takaue Tenmangu Shrine

 

My first stop after coming down the mountain and reachting the wide open  plain around Itoshima was the village shrine in Takae.

Located atop a small rise covered in trees, with a torii and steps leading up, very much a typical shrine.

There was no signboard so I have no idea how long it has been a Tnmangu. There are a lot of Tenmangu shrines in Fukuoka, but am not sure when they would have been established.

Dazaifu Tenmangu is now considered the head of all tenmangu shrine nation-wide, but it was temple until early Meiji so it didn't spread locally from there. Many shrines in my area became Tenmangu shrines fairly late.

Here in Kyushu the shrine buildings tend to be more open, probably due to the warmer climate. There were a couple of small secondary shrines in the grounds.

The previous post was on the walk down the mountain.

Karatsu Shrine

 

Karatsu Shrine is the main shrine of the castle town of Karatsu on the coast of Saga in northern Kyushu.

It was moved to its current site in the first years of the 17th century when the Terazawa took over the domain and started construction of nearby Karatsu Castle, though its origins goes back much further.

In 755, a local notable, Kanda Munetsugu, had a dream which told him to go to the beach and he found a wooden box washed up there. Inside it was a mirror. He determined it was the mirror left on the beach as an offering by the mythical Empress Jingu when she returned from Korea.

The shrine was established with the three Sumiyoshi kami enshrined as well as Kanda Munetsugu who was given the name Kanda Daimyojin.

The shrine was known as Karatsu Daimyojin until early Meiji when the name was changed to Karatsu Shrine.

It is the home of Karatsu Kunchi, the main festival of the town held in the first week of November and which features giant floats.

There are a lot of smaller, secondary shrines within the grounds, including three different Inari Shrines: Shiratobi Inari, Hibushi Inari, and  Shiratama Inari.

 

There is a Kotobuki-sha that enshrines Sukunahiko, and an Awashima Shrine.

There is a largish Tenmangu Shrine, a Suitengu Shrine, and an Ebisu Shrine.

Next post in the series will be on the floats of the Karatsu Kunchi festival, on display in their own exhibition hall.

I visited at the start of day 73 of my walk along the Kyushu Pilgrimage. The previous post in the series was on Karatsu Castle.

Ono Tenmangu Shrine

 

Ono is a small agricultural settlement in the mountains between Takeo Onsen and Arita in Saga. The larger area is called Yamauchi, and it is now part of Takeo.

Walking between Kurokami Shrine and the next temple on my pilgrimage the tall banners indicated that some kind of matsuri was about to take place.

Ono Tenmangu is an unremarkable, fairly standard village shrine. There was no signboard and no-one around so I could get no further information.

Other than a single pair of komainu and a pair of lanterns there were no other decorations.

There were two separate Inari shrines.

As a Tenmangu the main enshrined deity would be Tenjin, the deified form of Sugawara Michizane.

It is unknown whether the shrine was established as a Tenmangu or an ujigami shrine that later adopted Tenjin.

The previous post in this series was on Kurokami Shrine.

Wakaura Tenmangu Shrine

 

The steps up to Wakaura Tenmangu Shrine are steep and rough, but not as long as the stairs up to the neighboring Kishu Toshogu Shrine.

Wakaura Tenmangu is older than the Toshogu by about 7 centuries, although the Tenmangu was rebuilt about ten years before the Toshogu was built in the 17th century.

Enshrining Tenjin, the deified form of Sugawara Michizane, known as a god of poetry and scholarship, Tenmangu shrines are where students head to before taking exams.

It is said that Michizane himself was here in 901 when the ship taking hime to "exile" in Dazaifu dropped anchor here to await favorable winds. He is said to have composed two poems here.

Wakaura, or Wakanoura, literally means Bay of Poetry, and Michizane was adding to a long list of poems composed in the area since ancient times.

It is said that Naoki Tachibana stopped here on his return from Daizaifu, where Michizane's grave was, sometime between 964 and 968, and established the shrine.

The shrine was destroyed in 1585 during the invasion of the area by Hideyoshi. It was rebuilt in 1604 by Yukinaga Asano and employed the leading craftsmen of the day.

The painted carvings of animals around the eaves of the main building are particularly noteworthy. There are several sub-shrines within the grounds, and great views from the shrine over Waknoura.

The previous post in this series on attractions of Wakayama City was the neighbouring Kishu Toshogu Shrine.

Uchida Tenmangu

 

Mid February, and the plum trees lining the approach to Uchida Tenmangu are about to burst into bloom. Tenmangu shrines often have plum trees as they were a favorite topic for ancient Japanese poets and scholars like Sugawara Michizane who is enshrined here.

The bamboo attached to the torii would have been fresh when put up for the new year. The torii are Hizen-style as this is still within what used to be Hizen. Uchida is a small settlement in between Takeo and Ureshino in Saga.

I am heading up the Rokkaku River along National Route 34 which roughly follows the old Nagasaki Kaido.

There is no info on the shrine, although there are a lot of Tenmangu shrines in this part of Kyushu. There is a massive old camphor tree that suggests that the shrine has been here for some centuries.. although the pavilion-style main building has been recently rebuilt. Its ceiling is covered in small square paintings, but its too dark to get a good photo.

I'm on day 58 of my walk along the Kyushu Pilgrimage, though I am making quite a detour in order to visit a site that will be closing down in a few weeks....

The previous post was the nearby Otsubo Quarry.

Osaka Tenmangu

Osaka Tenmangu

Osaka Tenmangu is a large, quiet, shrine in the middle of downtown Osaka that is the origin of Osak's biggest matsuri, the Tenjin matsuri.

There are countless thousands of wooden ema strung up around the main buildings, the vast majority containing prayers for success in exams, as this is a Tenmangu shrine, enshrining Sugawara Michizane, considered to be the patron of scholarship.

The origin of the shrine comes from when Sugawara Michizane stopped at Daishogunsha Shrine on his journey to "exile" in Dazaifu. That shrine now exists as a sub-shrine in the grounds today.

A small pond in the grounds is home to some Japanese pond  turtles,.... something I think is more common at shrines than at temples....

The shrine buildings have been destroyed many times by fire, but surprisingly the main hall anf gate survived the destruction of WWII and date back to the mid 19th century.

There are a lot of secondary shrines within the large grounds, including the obligatory Inari Shrine.

This was my second day walking the Kinki Fudo Myo pilgrimage and was heading to the next temple after having visited  Houoninji.