Takeda Shrine & Shimazu Tadayoshi

Takeda Shrine seems to be the main shrine in the area of Kaseda that used to be the samurai district. There are numerous sub-shrines in the grounds including a Gokoku Shrine, but the primary kami is Shimazu Tadayoshi.

Born in 1493 and died in 1568 he rose to became the head of the Shimazu Clan after the inevitable power struggles that occurred between competing branches of any of the large, powerful clans. The Shimazu ruled over the Satsuma Domain which during this time covered a lot of southern Kyushu.

Tadayoshi is remembered today primarily for his poetry. He composed a group of 47 poems in Iroha format which was a late Heian period type of Japanese poetry. The themes were primarily Confucian and were used as a basis for his rule of the domain. He retired to this area though still exercised considerable power while retired.

The poems are inscribed on rocks along a path that leads from the shrine into the forested mountain behind. While I was there some event was going on with be-sashed volunteers handing out information sheets to people walking the path.

Apparentky the shrine also hosts several festivals involving samurai cosplay.

Dangyo Shrine & Waterfalls

Deep in the forested mountains of the interior of Dogo, the largest of the Oki Islands, are Dangyo Shrine and its pair of waterfalls. Just outside the torii are a pair of huge, ancient trees. The story is that when Izumo Taisha was being rebuilt the shrine was ordered to supply any such trees for timbers for the construction. The local people moved the torii forward some meters so that the trees then fell outside the shrine grounds and so were spared the felling.

There are two waterfalls here. The smaller is considered female and the larger male. With Japan's obsession with ranking, the waters here are ranked one of the 100 Best Waters of Japan. The water from the female waterfall is considered "winners" water, and is drunk by competitors in human nad bull sumo tournaments.

a couple of small shrines are inside the overhang over which the male waterfall cascades. The male kami here is Oyamakui, an Izumo kami who is famously enshrined at Hie Taisha below Enryakuji. The female kami is Seoritsuhime, not a well known kami but said to be the kami of waterfalls, rapids etc.

Bronze mirrors and other artifacts have been excavated here suggesting that this has been a sacred site since prehistory. Well worth the effort needed to visit, as are all the Oki Islands.

Kaseda Samurai District

Towards the end of day 35 walking around Kyushu I reached Kaseda in what is now Minami Satsuma City. Earlier in the afternoon I had discovered the Barn Built by Giants, which remains one of my most popular posts.

In the old part of town I wandered around what must have been one of the Satsuma Clans fortified samurai villages like Chiran that I had wandered around early this morning.

Maybe not as well preserved as in Chiran, and not registered as a preservation district, but with all these tell-tale features of a semi-fortified samurai district. Apparently one garden is open to the public.

Tadayoshi Shimazu the Satsuma daimyo at the end of the 15th Century retired to this area, and there was once a castle of sorts nearby, connected to the Heike almost 1,000 years ago nothing now remains.

Echizen-toge Pass

Early on my second day walking the Saigoku Pilgrimage I left the Jizo Jaya Teahouse area and followed the stone path through the forest.

Over one pass, then a short downhill then a short uphill to Echizen Toge Pass. From here it is about a 4k downhill walk to the river about 800 meters lower in altitude. Most people climb up as part of the Nakahechi route of the Kumano Kodo, but I was walking the Saigoku Pilgrimage which follows the same route but in the opposite direction. It is said that the climb up to Echizen Toge is the toughest part of the route.

Yesterday I had passed only one soul walking the trail in the opposite direction to me. Today I past several largish groups of chattery people on their way up. They must hve started pretty early and were obviously planning to get to Nachi before the day was too old.

There were, of course, plenty of statues along the wayside. At the river, I started back up as I had another climb and descent before I reached my destination for the day, Hongu.

Mizukarakuri Ningyo at Toyotamahime Shrine

Karakuri Ningyo are a type of mechanical doll that was very popular in the Edo Period. A rarer form was the water-powered mechanical doll, an example of which I found at Toyotama Shrine in Chiran. Behind the glass case displaying this tableau was a small waterwheel that powered the figures' movements.

Unfortunately, it is only operated  for a few days during a festival. Every year a different set up is displayed. This one was about a local legend involving demons.

The shrine appears to be the main one for Chiran, and enshrines Toyotamahime, the "princess" who was a daughter of the Undersea King. The myth is very popular and many shrines in southern Kyushu enshrines the various characters from the story

There was no-one about as it was still early in the morning and I had to head off  and reach the coast before heading north on this my 35th day of walking around Kyushu.

Anger From the Bottom by Beat Takeshi

As I was climbing up towards the first mountain temple on the Shodoshima Pilgrimage I spied ahead of me what I guessed was a kind of shrine. When I got to it I was faced with a stainless steel figure with big red eyes and an axe embedded in its skull.

Anger From the Bottom is a sculpture by "Beat" Takeshi Kitano and Keniji Yanobe, originally produced for the Setouchi Art Triennale that takes place in the area. It is one of the artworks that is now permanently on display.

Originally there was no roof over it, and the statue was below ground only rising up for 5 minutes every hour. Takeshi is famous in japan as a comedian and TV presenter, but internationally he is known as a film-maker. The unexpected and surprising is a large part of why I enjoy my walks around rural Japan......

Chiran Samurai District

I wandered around the Samurai district in Chiran early in the morning before tourists had arrived. I recently posted on the gardens found in many of the former samurai residences. It is a Preservation District of Groups of Traditional Buildings, one of about 120 such districts around Japan, and I have come to enjoy most of the ones I have visited, though the better ones tend to be, like here in Chiran,  off the beaten track

Primarily one street, it is lined with well-constructed stone walls topped with impenetrable hedges. To get into any residence or garden you have to pass through a high-walled corridor that twists and tiurns at 90 degrees several times, a classic defensive arrangement found in many castles.

This was a semi-fortified village. The Shogunate decreed that each domain must only have one castle. This resulted in many castles being dismantled, and others moved. It was also decreed that all samurai must live within the castle town. Here in the distant lands of the Satsuma in southern Kyushu, this last law was ignored.

The Satsuma placed settlements of samurai throughout their domain, Chiran being just one. This was obviously a defensive measure by the Satsuma, but may also have been simple logistics, because the Satsuma had a high percentage of samurai. A figure of 10% is often considered the percentage of samurai in the Japanese population, but here in Satsuma the figure was above 20%.

Okayama Castle

Okayama Castle was constructed between 1573 to 1597 by the Ukita Clan. They were on the wrong side of the Battle of Sekigahara and so the castle passed briefly to the Kobayakawa Clan before coming under the control of the Ikeda Clan who held it until the abolition of the domains in 1869.

The castle's nickname was  Crow Castle because of its black exterior. The famous Himeji Castle not far away was likewise nicknamed "White Egret Castle".

The Asahi River was utilized as a moat on two sides of the castle.

Some of the roof decorations are gilded, but for its first few years all the roof tiles were  gilded earning it the nickname Golden Crow Castle.

This last photo is taken from Korakuen Garden which was built by the Ikeda.

Samurai Gardens of Chiran

At the start of day 35 of my first walk around the island of Kyushu I wandered around the former samurai district in Chiran, a small town  in the south of Kagoshima. Seven of the former samurai residences are open to the public, but none of the buildings can be entered. However they all have delightful gardens.

Most of the gardens are relatively small and usually incorporate the distant mountains as "borrowed scenery". The first photo is the garden at the Saigo Keiichiro residence. This second photo is at the Hirayama Ryoichi residence. Its garden is unusual in that it has no stone arrangements, and is primarily pruned hedges, including azalea. This type of garden was an Edo period innovation and is usually attributed to Kobori Enshu.

Obviously, all these residences belonged to fairly high ranking samurai. The above garden belonged to Sata Mifune. 6 of the 7 gardens are karesansui, dry gardens with no water.

This one belonged to Sata Tamiko, and the bottom photo belonged to Mori Shigemitsu. It is the only garden with a water feature, and I believe he was the most senior samurai of the district

Gongendo Shrine Ishigaki

Gongendo Shrine is a Shinto shrine on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa Prefecture. It is claimed that Okinawa is part of Japan, and it is also claimed that "Shinto" is the indigenous religion of Japan that dates back thousands of years into the mists of prehistory.

Gongendo Shrine was established in 1614, though it was destroyed by a tsunami in 1771 and rebuilt in 1786. and as far as I am able to discover was the first Shinto shrine on the island.

The Ryukyu Kingdom was established on the main island of what is now called Okinawa in the 15th Century and later took control of Ishigaki. In 1609 the Japanese Satsuma Clan invaded the Ryukyus and established military domination. Gongendo Shrine was built in 1614.

Like most Japanese shrines of that time Shinto architecture and ornaments and such were heavily Buddhist, and so it is here at Gongendo, though the Chinese influence is evident. Gongendo Shrine is immediately adjacent to Torinji Buddhist temple which I will cover in my next Okinawa post

Ishigaki Sea Salt