Negoroji Temple and Zoga Shu in the Kino River basin on the Highway

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Summary

Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.

Kaidou wo yuku Vol 4Kinokawa Kaidou.

In the previous article, I described the Awa travelogue. This time, I will describe a trip around Kino River in Wakayama Prefecture.

Negoroji Temple and Zoga Shu in the Kino River basin on the Highway

This time, we will visit Negoroji Temple in Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture, which was built by Kakuhan, who was once a prosperous Buddhist priest and advocated the Pure Land of Migen, and the Negoro Sect, which boasted military prowess as a gun group.

Negoroji Temple is located at the foot of the Kishu side of the Fubuki Pass.

The top of the pass (now the Fubuki Tunnel) is a low hill, 216 meters high, through which the Negoro Highway has passed since ancient times. If you go north, you will reach Senshu (now Sennan City, Osaka), and if you go south, you will be in front of the Negoroji Temple. If you go further down, you will see the light of the Kino River. In the Kino River basin, a narrow plain is cultivated without wasting a single inch of soil.

The history of Negoroji Temple dates back to the late Heian period, when it was built by Kakuban, who was at one time the head of Koyasan.

As described in “Jōdoism and the Power of Amida Buddha, which introduced the Concept of Parallel Worlds“, Kakuman was in the late Heian period when the Jōdo belief that one could be saved by other forces (Amida Buddha) without being liberated from the conventional system of self-reliance was born, and he studied at Kōyasan, which was originally founded by Kukai. He merged the teachings of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, as described in “The Internet and Vairochanabutsu – The Kegon Sutra and Esoteric Buddhism,” with the ideas of Pure Land Buddhism, and formulated the idea that Dainichi Nyorai, the principal deity of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, is not an immutable light but changes into Amida Nyorai when he provides salvation.

Therefore, he believed that even if a person could not perform the strict three esoteric practices and could not attain sokushin-jyobutsu, he or she could still be born in the Pure Land if he or she performed only one nectar practice, which he called the “abbreviated view of the Pure Land of Mikigon.

Kukai’s Mikigon studies had been limited to the study of Kukai’s esoteric Buddhism, since Kukai died having perfected it, and his successors had nothing to do but to study Kukai.

This new ideology aroused great dissension in Koyasan, and in 1140 he was forced to leave Koyasan, entering Negoro where he spread his ideology as Negoroji-hojo.

Negoroji Temple is said to have been a large religious city with more than 20,000 priests and lay believers living in the mountain.

It also seems to have been a major fortress, and as seen in the old map above, the overall structure of the temple was very fortified, and the pagoda was built in a manner similar to a fortress structure. It was also the administrative office for nearby temples and shrines, and Kishu was regarded as a place of great importance by Negoro.

For example, in 1543, when Negoroji Temple heard that guns had been introduced to Tanegashima Island, south of Satsuma, it immediately sent out people to take over one of the two boats that had been introduced, brought it back to Negoro, and had a large number of guns made by a forge in Sakai. Negoro is always mentioned in the story of the transmission of guns.

Later, Negoro was armed with guns ahead of the warring feudal lords, and was feared by all sides as an outstanding group of guns until it was finally destroyed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Negoro also became famous for its Negoro lacquerware. This was a huge religious city, as mentioned above, which required furniture for meals, and everything from rice bowls, soup bowls, and tea utensils, to sacred utensils, Buddhist ritual utensils, stationery, shelves, desks, and other furnishings, to gusoku and helmets, were all made of lacquer from trees in the nearby Kishu Mountains.

Negoro lacquerware is characterized by the rich and plump shape of bowls, the deep reddish color of vermilion lacquer, and the beauty of the black lining that comes out after years of use. Bowls from the medieval period (Muromachi era) are especially valuable, and are called “koneraku.

The mountain range separating Kishu (Wakayama Prefecture) and Osaka’s Minamikawachi County is sometimes called the Ikoma/Kingo Mountains, sometimes the Katsuragi Mountains, and sometimes only the southern part of it is called the Izumi Mountains.

This area is a major center of mountain Buddhism and esoteric Buddhism, and there are many old temples in this field.

The first is Koukiji Temple.

The temple is located on the western peak of the mountain range and is named after the fragrance of its plants and trees.

There is also Joshin-ji Temple, where Masanari Kusunoki is said to have studied, Kokon-ji Temple, where Saigyo entered the Buddhist monastery, and Shofuku-ji Temple, where Kukai first resided after returning from the Tang Dynasty and where he organized the Buddhist scriptures he had brought with him.

After Negoroji Temple was destroyed, Wakayama Castle was built along the Kino River.

Wakayama Castle was originally built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who also designed Uwajima Castle and Ozu Castle as described in “Kaido yuku – Minami-Iyo, Nishi-Tosa no Michi: Clouds over the Hill and the Date Family in Tangoku“. Takatora Todo designed Uwajima Castle and Ozu Castle.

Wakayama Castle is characterized by its use of nozuraishi, natural stones quarried from the mountains and fields.

Inside the castle keep is a small museum, where a unique helmet called a saiga-bachi is on display.

During the Warring States period, the local samurai of the Kino River valley formed an alliance called the “Zoga Party” and refused to be ruled by outside forces. They were unique in many ways, as seen in this helmet. One of the unique points is that they used guns extensively and were proficient in marksmanship. Another was that they were united by their Jodo Shinshu faith. The relationship between the upper and lower classes was loose, and their atmosphere was civic, which was rare in medieval Japan. The helmet above is a product of the local blacksmithing, lacquer work, and metal casting techniques.

Wakayama has been a prosperous farming area since ancient times, leaving here and there forests possessed by the gods as places for their deities. One of the most representative of these places is a shrine called Nichizen-gu or also called Nachikusa-gu, where two shrines, Nichizen-jingu and Kunikake-jingu, are located within one precinct.

This will be one of the power spots with ancient gods surrounded by forests.

In the next article, we will discuss the Shirakawa-Aizu road.