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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 Volume 18 Echizen no syodou.
In the previous article, I described a trip to Ireland. This time, the journey will be to Echizen no Moro-do, Fukui Prefecture. This trip begins at Hokeiji Temple. As mentioned in “Zen Master Dogen“, Hokeiji Temple was founded by Jakuen, a monk who came from China in admiration of Dogen. While thinking about Jakuen, who devoted himself to zazen meditation and keeping Dogen’s Zen style alive, I visited Hokeiji Temple, located deep in the mountains, and saw the famous images of Dogen and Jakuen in the Treasure House, which a young Unsui (a Buddhist monk) guided me to. That day we stay at an old ryokan in Katsuyama, and the next day we visit Hiraizumiji Temple. The next day, we visited Heisenji Temple, recalling the rise and fall of the temple, which was called Houshi Daimyo in the Middle Ages. We also visited the ruins of the Asakura family in Ichijodani, and thought about Yoshikage Asakura, who was destroyed by Nobunaga. After visiting Maruoka Castle and Mikuni Port, the last stop on the tour was the Echizen Pottery Village, where the visitors saw the old Echizen techniques.
Echizen no kuni (present-day Fukui Prefecture) first appears in history in the story of Emperor Tsugitai, who lived in Fukui and succeeded to the Emperor’s family, as described in the article “The Highway to Hokkoku, Its Side Routes, and the Mysteries of Ancient Japan“. Ryotaro Shiba also mentions that this story suggests that Echizen (Fukui Prefecture) in the mid-Kofun period was a major force in agricultural production, ironware production, and irrigation engineering compared to other regions.
This is confirmed by the countless number of medium-term kofun tumuli that were built in Echizen.
The Echizen Shodo Journey begins at Fukui Station. Fukui Station is decorated with giant objects of various dinosaurs.
This is because Fukui Prefecture is famous as a dinosaur kingdom, with the largest dinosaur fossil excavation site in Japan, and approximately 80% of all dinosaur fossils discovered in Japan were found in Fukui Prefecture, and some dinosaur fossils were first discovered in Fukui Prefecture, including “Fukuisaurus,” “Fukuiraptor,” “Fukui Benator,” ” There are also many dinosaurs bearing the name “Fukui,” including “Fukuisaurus,” “Fukuiraptor,” “Fukui Venator,” and “Fukui Titan.
The first place we headed to from Fukui Station was Hokeiji Temple.
Hokeiji Temple is a serene temple nestled in the mountains, and as mentioned in “Zen Master Dogen,” it was founded by Jakuen, a monk from China who admired Dogen.
Dogen could not accept the idea of “Jodo” faith (that one can be saved by faith in Amida Nyorai) as described in “Kuya, Honen, Shinran, and Ippen: The Genealogy of Jodo Thought,” which was at its peak during the same period, but he believed that Buddha was within oneself and that one could attain enlightenment through practice, which he described in “Mahayana Buddhism and the Prajnaparamita Sutra” . He took a stance similar to the teachings of the Buddha in founded the Zen sect (Soto Zen), and established its head temple in Fukui’s Eiheiji Temple.
After Dogen’s death, a conflict surfaced between the conservative faction that sought to preserve his legacy and the open-minded faction that sought to incorporate the Dharma method for the edification of sentient beings.
Later, the Soto sect repeatedly split into various factions, and the head temple was not only Eiheiji, but also Sojiji Temple in Tsurumi Ward, Yokohama City.
The temple is also located in Kanagawa Prefecture (Minami-ashigara City), where a monk named Doryo, who contributed to the temple’s construction, is said to have turned into a tengu and hid himself in the mountains upon the temple’s completion.
In this way, it expanded and became the largest single religious sect in Japan today, with more than 14,000 temples and a number of educational institutions, including Komazawa University, which has attracted much attention in recent years for its student relay races.
A portrait of Zenji Dogen (see above) can be seen in the Treasure House of Hokeiji Temple.
The group then descended the mountain to the city of Katsuyama, where they stayed at a ryotei ryokan called “Itajin.
The next day, the group visits Heisenji Temple (now Hakusan Shrine), a dozen minutes away by cab from Katsuyama.
The temple was the home of the Buddhist temple Reiozan Hiraizumiji Temple until the separation of Buddhism and Shintoism in the Meiji era (1868-1912), and as you can see from the photo, it is famous for its moss.
As you can see from the photo, the temple is famous for its moss. Heisen-ji Temple was built in accordance with the belief in Mt. Hakusan, which straddles the three countries of Echizen, Kaga, and Tobiwa, and was erected at a place called Echizen Baba (Baba means “wide road” until the Meiji era) as the trailhead for the Fukui side of the mountain.
With the introduction of Buddhism, the word “Gongen” or “Myojin,” which has a Buddhist worldview, became more modernistic and had universal value than the word “Kami,” and the Hakusan deity came to be called Hakusan Gongen. Rituals came to be conducted in Buddhism, and temples took center stage, with monks and priestly soldiers living there.
The temple became the center of Buddhism, and monks and priests began to reside there. In order to gain political power, they became affiliated with Hieizan Enryaku-ji Temple (the head temple of the Tendai sect), as described in “Kaido yuku Eizan no Shodo (Saicho and the Tendai sect),” and neighboring landowners also donated their cultivated fields to Hakusan to secure territorial relief. At its peak, the Kakuda Shirasan had a territory of 50,000 koku and a mobilization of 200,000 people, making them as powerful as feudal lords. This type of situation can be seen throughout Japan, and it is believed that the Negoroji Temple in Wakayama, mentioned in “Negoroji Temple and Zoga Shu in the Kino River Basin on the Highway,” grew enormously in the same way.
In 1574 (Tensho 2: when Oda Nobunaga’s power was expanding), Hiraizumiji Temple, which had boasted such power, was destroyed by a revolt of exploiting farmers in response to a revolt in the neighboring province of Kaga. As a result of this event, the name of the place became “Katsuyama.
Later, he went to the remains of the Asakura family in Ichijodani, which was the residence of Yoshikage Asakura, who was destroyed by Nobunaga Oda,
The trip ends with a visit to Maruoka Castle and Mikuni Port, and then to the Echizen Pottery Village to see the techniques of old Echizen.
Ko-Koshizen is derived from Tokoname ware produced in Tokoname City, Aichi Prefecture, and is one of the “Six Old Kilns of Japan,” which were produced from the Heian to Muromachi periods and then ceased for a time. According to Ryotaro Shiba, the Japanese aesthetic of wabi and sabi, which is unique to Japan, is close to that of “earthenware,” and is distinctly different from the Western sense of beauty.
In the next article, I will discuss a trip to the Nagoya area in Aichi Prefecture.
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