Life Tips & Miscellaneous Travel and History Zen Philosophy and History Art and Sport Navigation of this blog
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.
Kaido wo yuku Volume 9 Kouyasan michi.
The previous trip was the Banshu-Ibogawa-Murozu route. This time, the journey will be along the Koyasan route. Koyasan was founded by Kukai, and Ryotaro Shiba and his party drove from Osaka to Kutoyama at the foot of the mountain, crossing the Kimi Pass to the south. At Mt. Kudozan, the group drove south over the Kimi Pass from Osaka and entered Kudozan at the foot of the mountain. At Mt. The town stone road leading up to Koyasan from Kutoyama was in disrepair at the time, and was almost as abandoned as the road itself. At the entrance to the road, we felt a sense of awe as if we were being drawn into a deep mountain valley. Next, thinking about the connection between Koya Sage and Kukai’s Pure Land faith, I visited the Shinbetsudo, a place where ascetic monks dedicated themselves to the practice of nenbutsu (the recitation of the Buddhist prayer).
This trip started from Kutoyama, a mountainous area in Wakayama Prefecture. Kutoyama is the location where Masayuki Sanada, Yukimura and his son were forced out of Ueda Castle in Shinshu after their defeat in the Battle of Sekigahara, which was also the setting for the 2016 NHK historical drama “Sanadamaru.
Kutoyama is dotted with places of interest associated with Yukimura Sanada, including the Kutoyama Sanada Museum. The Sanada family was originally a vassal of Shingen Takeda, a favorite foe of Kenshin Uesugi, as described in “Kudo no Michi (Niigata)” and participated in the famous Battle of Kawanakajima as a military commander on Takeda’s side.
After the death of Takeda Shingen, the Takeda family was destroyed by Oda Nobunaga during the reign of his son, Takeda Katsuyori, and the Sanada family later established a castle in Ueda, Shinshu, as an independent force.
When Nobunaga Oda fell in the Honnoji Incident and Hideyoshi Toyotomi took over, Masayuki Sanada, the head of the Sanada family, placed his eldest son Nobuyuki on the Tokugawa side and himself and his second son Nobushige (Yukimura) on the Toyotomi side, so that the Sanada family would remain intact no matter which way the battle went. After the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he joined the Toyotomi side (Western Army) in the Battle of Sekigahara and stopped Tokugawa Ieyasu’s son Hidetada’s army in Ueda so that he could not participate in the Battle of Sekigahara, but this did not affect the outcome of the battle and the Tokugawa side (Eastern Army) won, He was spared death and lived in seclusion at Kutoyama, located at the foot of Mount Koya. The place where Masayuki and Yukimura lived became Sanada-an.
During the ten years he spent at this Sanada-an hermitage, Masayuki died of illness. To participate in the Osaka Winter Campaign three years later, Yukimura used a loophole in the ruins of a burial mound known as the Sanada tumulus to escape from the Sanada hermitage and head for Osaka. He was active in the Osaka Winter Campaign/Osaka Summer Campaign, commanding the Ronin who gathered at Osaka Castle, but he was unable to deny his inferiority and died in the Osaka Summer Campaign.
Yukimura’s armor is “Akazonae”. Everything, including banners, armor, and flags, will be red in color. It is said that the use of this armor not only made his army look more powerful, but also inspired the morale of his soldiers, who were willing to risk their lives to fight alongside Yukimura.
It is said that George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, was inspired to design the costumes of Darth Vader and other characters by Japanese armor from the Warring States period. The red-colored royal guards may have been inspired by this “akazonae.
Kutoyama is at the foot of Mt. Koya, which was founded by Kukai, and is also home to buildings of the Shingon sect of Buddhism. One of them is Niu-kansho-bu Shrine (Niu-kansho-bu Shrine) and Jison-in Temple.
Jison-in, which is registered as a World Heritage site, has long been known as the temple of Kobo-Daishi Kukai’s mother, Prince Kukai.
Jison-in is said to be associated with the origin of the name “Mt. Kudo-zan,” and there is a theory that it was named Mt. Kudo-zan because Kukai came to see his mother nine times a month from Koyasan.
The road leading to Koyasan from Jison-in at Mt. Kudozan is called Koyasan Machiseki-michi, a pilgrimage route with 180 stones.
In the Kamakura period (1185-1333), at the request of Priest Kakkyo, stone statues of five-ring pagoda-shaped town stones were erected every town (109 m) over a period of 20 years to replace the wooden ones that had decayed. This five-ring pagoda is made up of the five elements of “sky,” “wind,” “fire,” “water,” and “earth” that form the universe in Shingon Buddhism, and is shaped like a “jewel,” “half-moon,” “hat,” “circle,” and “square.
It is about 22 km to Koyasan Daimon (Gate) by Koyasan Machisekido, a journey that would take 7 hours on foot.
Koyasan, founded by Kukai, is the head temple of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, and as you enter through the main gate, you will find a variety of architectural structures.
As described in “The Internet and Vairochanabutsu – The Kegon Sutra and Esoteric Buddhism” Shingon Buddhism is an esoteric religion based on Mahayana Buddhism, which was influenced by Hinduism in India.
Kukai, the founder of the Shingon sect, was born in 774, the third son in Sanuki Province, which is now Kagawa Prefecture, at the end of the Nara Period. At the age of 18, he moved to Nagaokakyo, as described in “Kaido yuku – Tanba Sasayama kaido” (The Road to Sasayama), and entered the Daigakuryo (a bureaucratic training institution under the Ritsuryo system) to study Myo Kyodo (Confucian studies), but left after one year and entered a mountain forest to devote himself to Buddhist asceticism. He left the school after one year and entered the mountain forests to practice Buddhism. Although he could have entered the elite bureaucracy if he had continued to work at the university dormitory, he dared to embark on a path of hardship based on his own beliefs. Then, Kukai wrote
Do not be proud of the poison of frivolous fame and profit.
Do not be conceited or poisoned by frivolous fame and profit. In any case, “All people, both noble and lowly, will die. They will die, and when they are dead, they will be burned to ashes. So.
The Rin-oh’s medicine is poisoned if it is neglected, and the Daigo of the Dharma Emperor is a curse if it is slandered.”
If one’s goals are filled with dishonest thoughts, even the Buddha Dharma of the Sage King Towa will turn into poison as one strives to realize them, and the teachings of the Dainichi Nyorai Buddha will in turn create misfortune. If you do not pursue fame and profit, you will not be deceived by a lowly mind, and you will be able to live with ease. He said that fame and fortune come only afterwards.
Kukai also differed from other Buddhist monks in that, while he considered Buddhism to be the highest teaching, he never excluded Confucianism or Taoism, but maintained a broad perspective. In his “Eternal Vow,” he wrote
All that flies in the sky, dwells on the ground, flows in the water, and plays in the forest, they are all my teachers, and together we shall enter into a state of enlightenment.
All of them are my teachers. Birds in the sky, insects in the ground, fish swimming in the rivers, and animals running in the forests are all my teachers. In other words, Kukai was expressing his incomparable inclusiveness.
Here, Ryotaro Shiba describes Koya Sage. According to Ryotaro Shiba, Buddhism in the Nara and Heian periods was a government-manufactured Buddhism, whose job was to pray for the nation, not to pray for people to die and become Buddhas. As described in “Zen Philosophy and History, Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity,” such a concept was born out of the Pure Land Buddhism advocated by Honen in the late Heian period.
The teachings of these private priests gradually spread, becoming known as Jodo-shu and Jodo Shinshu in the late Heian period (794-1185) and Zen-shu in the early Kamakura period (1185-1333), and non-recognized Buddhism became recognized as official Buddhism. Furthermore, this act of praying for the common people took the form of monks conducting funerals so that people could safely go to the Pure Land when they died.
The group called “Hijiri” was responsible for spreading Buddhism throughout the country for the common people, and Koya Sei refers to the Sei at Koyasan. Thus, the roots of hijiri are Pure Land Buddhism, which differs from the teachings of the Shingon sect, but the Koya hijiri were a mix of these beliefs and became an all-encompassing Japanese Buddhist faith, according to Ryotaro Shiba.
Koya Sage also traveled around the country to raise funds for a fundraising campaign called “Kanjin,” and played an important role in the reconstruction of the Great Buddha of Nara after it was destroyed by the Heike clan, as described in “On the History of Art and Buddhist Statues in Japan.
After arriving at Koyasan, Ryotaro Shiba and his group finished their journey by inquiring about the true place where these Koyasan Sage practitioners dedicated themselves to the practice of Nembutsu (the recitation of the Buddhist prayer).
コメント