Showing posts with label tenmangu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tenmangu. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

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.


Wednesday, May 10, 2023

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.

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Osaka Tenmangu

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.

Ema.

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.

Osaka Tenmangu.

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.

Turtles.

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

Lanterns.

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.

Torii.

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

Osaka Tenmangu.

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

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Amagi to Tosu. Day 55 Walking Around Kyushu

Saturday, January 4th 2014

It's still dark when I leave my hotel and walk to Kurume Station. I take a train north across the river towards Amagi where I will continue my pilgrimage, but first, get off after a couple of stops at Kitano Station. A few hundred meters from the station is a shrine I want to visit, a branch of Kitano Tenmangu, the first shrine to Sugawara Michizane in Kyoto.


Amagi to Tosu.

 The village here is called Kitano after the shrine's name. That is not unusual, many places in Japan are named after the local shrine or temple. It is quite a big shrine and has a single statue of a white horse, fairly common at shrines, but also has three orange horses,... quite unusual. The walls of the corridors of the shrine are covered with examples of calligraphy, something the Kami Tenjin, the enshrined spirit of Michizane, is known for.


 I jumped back on a train to the last station of the line, Amagi, and when I arrive the sun is up promising another fine day. I had some trouble finding the first pilgrimage temple of the day, Kotokuin,number 7 in the order they are listed. It was located in a suburban area a little north of the station but was not a large temple with a typical large curved roof, but a small single-storey building, so I could not see it from a distance. I asked several passers-by but had no luck. Often in Japan if a place is not famous then even people who live nearby will not know where it is. I find it eventually and there is not much to see. My route now heads west across the wide plain. 


Japan is often characterized as being a mountainous country, and while that is true, there are plenty of wide-open flat areas, this being one of them. While I haven't yet traveled in many parts of Japan, so far in my experience Kyushu seems to have a lot of these flat areas. It is of course mostly farmland, and several times I pass near huge structure with silos. The fields and paddies are also interspersed with small settlements, marked by trees, the largest of the trees often indicate a shrine, none of the ones I visited had any visitors though. The shrines I visited were  Ushiki Tenmangu, Nomachi Takano, Shisojima Tenmangu, Otoguma Tenmangu, and Yokoguma Hayabusataka.


 By lunchtime, it is becoming more urban and I reach temple number 3, Nyoirinji, and it is very busy. It's not a very big temple but is obviously very popular. The most noticeable thing is a large number of frog statues. They are everywhere. In the car park are a line of large metal ones covered in what appears to be graffiti, but what is in fact prayers and wishes. I had hoped to meet with the head priest of the temple, the father of the young priest I had met at temple number 93 some 53 walking days ago, but he was obviously very busy. The grounds did have a nice walk with many fines statues so I leisurely explored before heading off. 


I headed south, now into urban Ogori, and walked parallel to several train lines as well as the main road and expressway. There were several larger shrines to stop at and explore, Rikitake Kamado, Misetaireiseki,  and Ogori Susano. I pass under the East-West expressway and turn west parallel to it.  At a big shrine I am surprised to find many statues of monkeys, not the Three Wise Monkeys, but mostly mother monkeys in red hats holding baby monkeys. It's a Hiyoshi Shrine, a branch of the famous shrine at the base of Mount Hiei whose guardian animal is the monkey.


 In Tashiro I find the last pilgrimage temple of the day, Fudo-in, number 4. It took some finding as it is a small concrete structure in the middle of a crowded suburban area. Nothing much to see except for a nice statue of Fudo Myo O, the temple's namesake. It's now getting late and I head south back toward Kurume. I get as far as Tosu before deciding to call it a day


As usual, I took photos of the many unique manhole covers I saw along the way.

Japan Shop

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Otoguma Tenmangu

 


A copse of tall, old trees rising from the middle of an expanse of fields is often a sure signifier of the location of a shrine.


The banners flying, in this case for the Hatsumode period of the new year is another sign.


Otoguma is another tiny settlement, in southern Fukuoka, and the small local shrine is a mere 250 meters from a neighboring village shrine, Shisojima Tenmangu, and this is yet another Tenmangu.


In 1884 a couple of more kami were added to the shrine. This was a time of great changes in the religious landscape of japan due to the separation of the buddhas and the kami. In 1918 some more were added and this may have been a result of the shrine closure-merger program.


Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Shisojima Tenmangu

 


Shisojima is a small farming settlement in southern Fukuoka near the Homan River.


The village shrine is yet another Tenmangu, very common in the area as Dazaifu Tenmangu is only about 10 kilometers upstream.


There was a small sumo ring for children, but it looked as if it hadn't been used in a while.


Since the early Meiji period a Shishimai, Lion Dance, has been performed here at the festival in September.


A secondary shrine in the grounds is said to enshrine Gozu Tenno, the original kami enshrined at Gion in what is now known as Yasaka Shrine. Over time Gozutenno became identified with Susano. It is said excavations at the shrine here unearthed evidence of Korean settlement.


Many Tenmangu and Tenjin shrines have a statue of an Ox, deriving from the legend that the location of Sugawara Michizane's tomb ( the current main hall of Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine), was decided by the ox pulling the cart carrying his deceased body.


If you look closely you can see that this komainu is male.......


Saturday, October 15, 2022

Ushiki Tenmangu

 


Ushiki is a small farming village on the bank of the Koishiwara River that runs from the mountains to the NE down to the Chikugo River. On the opposite bank is the town of Amagi where I had just visited Kotokuin Temple.


Walking west towards the next temple, Nyoirinji, the "Frog Temple", as was my habit I stopped in at any shrines I passed.


Most people would walk right past such a small, local shrine, but I was always on the lookout for interesting and unique artwork like carvings or statues, but also because such shrines have connections to local and national history.


There was nothing unusual in the art of this shrine, but its history throws some light onto a little known aspect of fairly recent "religious" history. This is now a Tenmangu,  enshrining Sugawara Michizane, a national shrine with many bramches, especially in this area. However, local records list it as a Ta shrine, with a couple of obscure kami.


The shrine has a large ancient tree with a couple of small shrines at its base. Interestingly the shintai, the object within the shrine that is inhabited by the kami when it descends, is arge stone. Most sources nowadays stress that shintai are mostly mirrors, though that is very much a modern creation of modern state shinto. Many shintai used to be Buddhist statues, and many small, local shrines, like here, used a stone. The mirror was linked with Amaterasu, the Imperial ancestor who is nowadays said to be central to shinto.


I suspect that this was the original shrine. In the early 20th century the government initiated a program of shrine closures which resulted in half of the shrines in Japan being closed. These were all local, often nature-based shrines with sacred trees. The trees were cut down and sold as lumber and locals were forced to worship at a national shrine.


One way some communities resisted this program was by very quickly enshrining a national kami in the shrine and therefore spared the destruction of the sacred tree. There are examples of this in my own area.