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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.
In the previous article, I described a trip to Spain/Portugal as the way of Nanban. This time it will be Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture.
Sado Island is located in the western part of Niigata Prefecture. The entire island belongs to Sado City, Niigata Prefecture, and is included in the Sado Yahiko Yoneyama National Park and the Sado Geopark. The population is 52,135. The island is designated as a “remote island constituting a specific inhabited border island area” under the inhabited border island law.
The shortest distance from the mainland is about 30 km, and the island has an area of about 855 square kilometers, about 1.5 times the size of Tokyo’s 23 wards, with a total circumference of about 200 km, about the same distance as the 180 km bicycle course of the Ironman triathlon described in “Triathlon, Hawaii Island and Ironman“. This is the reason why the Sado Island International Triathlon has been held there for more than 20 years since 1989.
From a historical perspective, artifacts excavated from ruins indicate that Sado has been inhabited since 10,000 years ago, and that it is an old island, appearing as the seventh of the eight great islands in the myth of the creation of the nation in “Kojiki,” the oldest historical book in Japan, and as the fifth island in the same myth in the “Nihon shoki” (Chronicles of Japan) shows that “Baikishu” and “Satoshu” are the fifth oldest twins.
Sado was already regarded as a country in the Nara period (710-794) and was designated as a place of exile, and it is known that many people, including the Manyo poet Asaomi Hozumi, who criticized the imperial family in 722, the Emperor Juntoku who was defeated in the Jokyu Rebellion in 1221, Nichiren Shonin who criticized the Kamakura shogunate and other religions in 1271, Zeami, a great master of Noh drama, who incurred the wrath of the Shogun in 1434, and others, were involved in political disputes in Sado until the Middle Ages. Until the Middle Ages, the island was an island to which aristocrats and intellectuals who were defeated in political disputes were exiled.
In the Edo period (1603-1867), Tokugawa Ieyasu, who saw the potential of Sado Island, began full-scale development of gold and silver mines on the island under the direct jurisdiction of the shogunate (tenryo), and the gold and silver mined on the island supported the finances of the Edo shogunate.
Such a journey on Sado Island begins at Atsukushi Shrine.
Atsukushi Shrine is located in a rice paddy field 2 km from Ryotsu Port on the Honshu side of the island (the rightmost star in the map above). To the left of the shrine grounds stands a Noh stage with an atmospheric straw-thatched roof, in front of which stands a large, calm worship hall, and behind this stands the main hall, again with only the straw-thatched roof visible.
This shrine is said to have been an old shrine dating back to the Heian period (794-1185). Sado Island has many rice paddies and gold mines, so many people have lived here since ancient times, and the standard of living was high.
From here, Ryotaro Shiba and his party headed in the direction of Sawada/Mano, located on the opposite side of the island’s central bend. Sawada is the center of Sado‘s land transportation and economy, and is also the start/finish line of the aforementioned Sado International Triathlon. Mano, on the other hand, is a town with a long history as the former seat of the national government of Sado Island.
Before heading to these towns, the group will stop by Ninomiya Shrine. This was originally a temporary palace built by the Kamakura Shogunate on the occasion of the birth of Queen Tadako, the second daughter of Emperor Juntoku, and named Shobu-den by Emperor Juntoku after he saw wild irises blooming in profusion. Emperor Juntoku was an emperor who was defeated in the Jokyu Rebellion against the Kamakura Shogunate and exiled to Sado Island, as described in “Kaido yuku – Miura Peninsula Ki“, and died on the island.
At Ninomiya Shrine, as at Atsukushi Shrine, there is a straw-roofed Noh stage on which Noh plays are still performed.
From Ninomiya Shrine, the group headed north to the Aikawa district. The Aikawa area is famous for the Sado Gold Mine. The symbol of the Sado Gold Mine is the Doyu Warido.
Doyu no Warido is the site of an open pit mining site from the Edo period (1603-1868), which is considered to be one of the earliest developmental mining sites in the Sado gold mines. The mountain becomes what appears to be a V-shaped crack as the huge veins of gold are dug through the mountain. This crack at the top of the mountain is approximately 30 m wide and 74 m deep.
Although it has been understood since ancient times that gold could be extracted, its value as money was not recognized, and it was often used for decorative purposes, as in the Chuson-ji Konjikido and Kinkaku-ji temples. On the other hand, with the arrival of the Nanban culture (Portuguese and Spaniards) as described in “Kaido yuku Tanegashima, Yakushima and Amami Islands” and “Kaido yuku Shimabara, Amakusa Roads and Christianity in Japan” the monetary value of gold was greatly emphasized and gold mines began to be dug.
In the beginning, the main purpose of gold mining on Sado Island was to collect gold sand, but Ieyasu Tokugawa, who succeeded in opening the Tokugawa Shogunate after winning the Battle of Sekigahara, paid attention to the Sado gold mine and started extensive mining, which at its maximum produced 400 kg of gold per year, or 40 tons in total.
It is said that the mining method of digging in the mountain at that time was so poor that miners could not survive for three years. Therefore, it is said that most of the miners were caught and sent to Edo (Tokyo) on a regular basis. These scenes are reproduced with dolls at the Sado Gold Mine Exhibition & Museum.
After the Sado Gold Mine, we continued south on Sado Island to Ogi Port, which is connected to Naoetsu in Niigata. Ogi Port prospered during the Edo period (1603-1867) with the transport of gold and silver from the Sado Gold Mine, and was also a port of call on the Sea of Japan route, as described in “Strolling along the Highway in Akita, Basho Matsuo, Masumi Sugae, and Ningyo Dosojin“.
Ryotaro Shiba went out to sea from here and looked at Sado Island.
Returning to the island, the group ended their trip at Okuradani in the Mano district to view the Kuradani Owaraji. The custom of making giant waraji at New Year’s and hanging them at both ends of the village in early spring is a kind of roadside guardian deity to exaggerate that “there is such a big man in this village” and to ward off misfortune and evil people. Dosojin, as described in “Strolling along the Highway in Akita, Matsuo Basho, Sugae Masumi and Ningyo Dosojin“, stands at the center of the village, at road junctions and crossroads as a guardian deity of the village, and is the most familiar indigenous deity in Japan.
In the next article, I will describe this trip to Aomori Prefecture.
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