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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.
the seventh volume of “Kaido yuku” (On the Road).
In the previous article, we visited Matsuo Basho’s “oi no kobun” and Awaji and Akashi from “Kaido yuku” (On the Road). This time, Ryotaro Shiba’s long-standing interest in iron led him to visit the remains of tatara iron manufacturing from Izumo in Shimane Prefecture to Kibi in Okayama Prefecture. The trip began at Yonago Airport, entered Yasugi City on the Unbaku border, saw the “Wako Memorial Museum,” and then visited the Torigami Coal Pig Iron Factory located at the foot of Torigami Tree (Mt. Funadori), where the eight-headed serpent was vanquished. After that, they proceeded westward along the shores of Lake Shinji, met the Korean bell at Komyoji Temple, and traveled up the Hii River to Yoshida Village to visit the Sugatani Tatara, the only surviving early modern tatara site in Japan. The tour will then cross the difficult Izumo Highway, the Shijukyoku Pass, into Okayama and visit Yubara Onsen Hot Spring. Finally, after visiting the Mantoyama burial mound in Kamo Town, the tour will enter Tsuyama, Sakushu.
Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, is located in the Chugoku region of Japan, and its capital is Matsue City. It faces the Sea of Japan and occupies the western part of the San’in region. It includes the Oki Islands and Takeshima, which are remote islands. The prefecture corresponds to the three provinces of Izumo, Iwami, and Oki in the former system of government. Even today, the three divisions of Izumo, Iwami, and Oki are sometimes used as regional classifications within the prefecture.
Ancient Izumo is thought to have started out with two major powers, the Western Izumo (near present-day Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture), which mainly produced bronze weapons, and the Eastern Izumo (present-day Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture; Yonago City and Oyama Town, Tottori Prefecture), which mainly produced iron weapons, and thereafter a unified dynasty was established and a religious state was formed around the Sea of Japan. This ironworking method developed in Japan, known as “tatara ironmaking,” in which iron sand is reduced using charcoal to produce iron of high purity at relatively low temperatures, and the bellows that feed air into the furnace are called tatara, hence the name.
According to Ryotaro Shiba, iron tools were a breakthrough that enabled significant efficiency not only as weapons but also as agricultural tools compared to conventional wooden ones, and because of this breakthrough, the Izumo region, especially eastern Izumo, had continuous cultural links to Hoki Province, as it was called under the Ritsuryo Code, especially in the Yayoi Period, Izumo and The Izumo cultural zone, including Hoki (western Tottori Prefecture) as described in “The Road to Inaba and Hoki“, became a leading region in ancient Japan.
According to the Japanese mythology created by the Yamato court, the divinely exiled Susano-no-mikoto descended to Izumo (along with his son, the fifty-mighty god of the Chronicles of Japan) and vanquished Yamata no Torochi, who was then known as “Yamato-no-mikoto,
He is said to have been the fifth grandson of Yashima Shinumi, the deity who, along with Shomana Bikona and Omononushi, pioneered the Izumo region, which is mentioned in the story of the White Rabbit of Inaba, as described in “The Road to Inaba and Hoki.
The Susa Shrine, listed as Susa Shrine in the Izumo no Kuni Fudoki, was built, and Izumo Taisha Shrine, with Okuninushi as its deity, was also built. The influence of this pre-Ritsuryo Izumo state can be seen throughout Japanese mythology, and the mainstream view is that its spiritual influence was enormous, as most myths about the creation of Japan are about Izumo and its surroundings.
However, it is believed that he eventually fell to the Yamato kingdom, and this was recorded in the famous myth of the handing over of the kingdom in the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan) and other books.
It is said that Izumo-taisha Shrine was built as a condition of exchange for the ceding of the country.
Various interpretations of the mystery of this ancient Izumo myth have been made, such as “Mizuki Shigeru’s Ancient Izumo” by Shigeru Mizuki, a native of Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, which is close to Izumo.
Later in Izumo, the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine was discovered in the Kamakura period and ruled by Amago no Tsunehisa, who took the silver mine. Amago no Tsunehisa was a man so brilliant in scheming that he was called a “scheming sage,” but at the same time he had a mysterious personality that was described as “a man of natural selflessness and honesty,” and together with Hojo Soun in the east, he became synonymous with the name of a “subordinate feudal lord. The novel about Amago no Tsunehisa is “Kusei: Amago no Tsunehisa Den” in four volumes.
Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine was also designated as a World Heritage Site in 2007. At its peak, one-third of the world’s silver was produced in Japan, most of it at Iwami Ginzan.
Here we return to our journey on the road. Yonago Airport, where the trip begins, is a small airport among regional airports. Today, the airport is called “Yonago Kitaro Airport” in honor of Shigeru Mizuki, and the main character of the airport is “Gegege no Kitaro,” one of the best-known works by Mizuki Jisetsu.
From there, one enters Yasugi City, famous for its Yasugi Bushi.
Yasugi City is also home to the Adachi Museum of Art, a world-renowned fusion of Japanese art and the most beautiful Japanese garden in Japan.
After seeing the “Wako Memorial Hall,” we visited the Torigami Coal Pig Iron Factory, located at the foot of Torigami Tree (Mt. Funadori), where the eight-forked serpent was said to have been vanquished. The tour then proceeded westward along the shores of Lake Shinjido.
The trip ends with a visit to Sugaya Tatara, Japan’s only existing early modern tatara site, and then over the difficult Shijukyoku Pass on the Izumo Highway into Okayama and Yubara Onsen.
In the next article, we will discuss the road in Tsubozaka, Yamato, Nara Prefecture.
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