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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.
Kaidoiu wo Yuku Vol 4 Rakuhoku Kaido.
In the previous article , I described the Kawachi region. This time, we will travel the mountainous area in the northern part of Kyoto as the Rakuhoku Roads.
Rakuhoku Roads, Stalwart Monks, Mountain Priests, and Monk Soldiers
Let’s start with stasta monks. Sta-sta-boji are literally monks walking sta-sta with several people, also known as ganjin-bo.
As shown in the figure above, he was dressed in an unusual manner, with his upper body naked, his head tied up in a hachimaki (headband), and a shimenawa hanging from his waist. They usually walked at a brisk pace, but suddenly they would rush out shouting, “Hadaka daisai daisai,” and would visit shrines and perform cold weather activities on behalf of the people. At first, the stasata were active only in Kyoto and its vicinity, but as time went by, their power spread down the Tokaido Highway and into Edo (now Tokyo).
When Ooka Echizen, a famous magistrate in the Edo period, became suspicious of the stalwart monk and inquired about his former employer, the reply was, “I am from the Daizoin Temple of Kuramadera, which is located in the northern part of Yamashiro,” so he contacted Kuramadera Temple in Kyoto. The reply was, “That Ganjinbouji is the future of Migiri, who practiced the art of war on this mountain when Minamoto no Yoshitsune was young, and those who were attached to him.
For Ryotaro Shiba, this anecdote and the stalwart monk seem to come to mind when he thinks of the Kurama Kaido road running beneath the large stone steps of Kuramadera Temple.
This chapter continues with the story of the stalwart monk and then the mountain priest.
The mountains in the northern part of Kyoto are known as a training ground for yamabushi, and during the Kamakura and Muromachi shogunate periods, the mountains seemed to be crawling with them, and it is said that Kusunoki Masanari, introduced in the previous Kawachi no Michi, held those yamabushi organizations in his hands. It is also said that the ninja who appeared in the Warring States period were also yamabushi, who lost their religious nature.
In the Edo period, most yamabushi were established in their villages and lived while using their own lines to perform blessings and prayers for the villagers, and were a bit more respected than the stalwart monks, who were not a poverty-stricken class, but gradually disappeared after the Meiji Restoration.
The village around Kuramadera originally began with the temple’s priestly soldiers.
Monk soldiers, also called “dharma warriors,” are not strictly speaking monks. They do not have the priestly rank of a monk who has received the precepts, nor can they usually read sutras, nor are they well-versed in Buddhist studies, but they do assume the form of a monk.
These warriors were usually found in wealthy temples with many manors (just as the samurai emerged from the demise of the aristocratic class during the Genpei War) and were usually engaged in the management of the temple’s manors and other chores. After Oda Nobunaga came out and burned down Enryaku-ji Temple on Mt. Hieizan, killing all the monks in the mountains, the monks at large temples gradually disappeared.
The remnants of these events can still be seen today in the form of the Kurama Fire Festival.
One religion that offers prayers for blessings similar to those of yamabushi is esoteric Buddhism in the Shingon sect, which I mentioned in the previous article. In fact, some Shingon priests are said to perform prayers for rain.
After the continued discussion of Kuramadera, the next stop would be Daihizan Bongjyo-ji Temple.
It is said that Minejoji Temple was built by Emperor Toba. Emperor Toba was an emperor at the end of the Heian period (794-1185). To enjoy his extravagance and selfishness, he gave up his position as emperor early in his life and spent 27 years as an unbounded emperor, building temples, and having a large number of successors in his palace. Thanks to these activities, after the death of Emperor Toba, the court quarrels became more prominent, leading to the Hogen Rebellion, in which the Heike clan rose to prominence.
After leaving Minejoji, we visited the Yamakuni mausoleum.
The mausoleums here are those of Emperor Kogon and Emperor Gohanazono of the Northern Court (the side supported by the Samurai) in the 14th century (late Kamakura to Muromachi periods), a period when two lines of emperors existed. According to Ryotaro Shiba, the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties was a time of complete avarice, and the standards of beauty (how beautiful a person should act) that existed in the later samurai period were not as prevalent in the historical sense.
In contrast to this world of only greed and gain, in the compilation of the History of Japan compiled by Mitsukuni Mito, the famous Mito Komon of the Tokugawa period, the ideology of the Chinese thought of that era, the Song school (especially Zhu Zi Gong), was irradiated and divided into right and wrong, which was called “Honoring the King and Exclusion of Foreigners,” which meant that the royal family should be respected no matter how weak it was, and that the nation and the world should be ruled by force. This led to the ideology of the end of the Edo period (1603-1867), which held that kings should be respected no matter how weak they were and that those who ruled the nation or the world by force, such as barbarians (powerful members of different ethnic groups), should be despised.
This idea of Shuji had a great influence until the end of the Pacific War, and as mentioned above, Kusunoki Masanari became a kind of Robin Hood who operated beyond his interests, and the samurai forces represented by Ashikaga Takauji became bandits at every turn. However, Japanese history is riddled with fictions, such as the fact that the Meiji Emperor was a member of the Northern Court (the Southern Court eventually declined and disappeared), which contradicted the Meiji Restoration, which was founded on the ideology that the Southern Court was the legitimate government of Japan.
The journey along the Rakuhoku Road ends after crossing the Miketsuzaka Pass with the following historical interpretation
In the next article, we will discuss the Minami-Iyo and Nishi-Tosa roads.
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