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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 Vol.29 Hida takayama .
In the previous article, I wrote about walking in Akita. This time, I would like to talk about Hida travel.
Road to Hida Travels and Beautiful Architecture
This trip will be in Hida, a mountainous area in the northern part of Gifu Prefecture. We will take a cab from Gifu Hatori Shinkansen to Hida, pass through Nakayama Nanasato, Gero Onsen, Ichinomiya Mizunashi Shrine, see the carving of Jingoro Left, the ruins of Matsukura Castle, Hida Furukawa, and walk north to Kamioka Shigezumi to see Koshinaka, the border with Toyama Prefecture, and then to Takayama city.
Our trip to Hida begins with the topic of the painter KAWANARI KURASAI (百済河成). Kawanari became what is called the first Japanese painter who lived in the early Heian period (780-850 A.D.). Although there had been various paintings in the history of Japan before that time, and there were people who painted them, they were artisans who painted paintings as an anonymous group, and Kawanari is said to have been the one whose name was mentioned as an individual painter in the history of the country.
As an individual, a Hida artisan appears as an antagonist to this Baekje Kawanari. In the “Kokinmonogatari-shu,” a collection of stories from the late Heian period (794-1185), there is an account of a masterful match between this painter and an artisan. The story goes, “Mr. Kawanari, I have recently built a one-ken, four-sided hall in my residence, and I would like you to come and paint on the walls. When he was surprised and tried to enter through the west door, the door “suddenly closed,” and when the south door eventually opened, he deliberately turned around to enter through the north door to avoid being caught this time, which also closed, and the west door opened instead, and so on.
The painter was so frustrated that, over time, he invited Hida Takumi to his mansion. When Takumi visited the Baekje residence and entered the room he was shown, he found a large human corpse lying in the room and the smell of decay filling the area. The artist was so shocked that he jumped down into the garden and stood there, when the painter appeared from the room and said, “How could you be in such a place?
The trip started from Gifu-Hatori station on the Shinkansen bullet train. Gifu-Hatori is in Gifu Prefecture, but it is not in the mountainous Hida region, but in the ancient name of the country, Mino. Mino itself is a flatland that has produced various warlords such as Dosan Saito.
The border between Mino and Hida is Kanayama and Tocho, and they are separated by a bridge called Sakaibashi
The scenic area at the entrance to Hida is Bishuikyo, which is also known as Nakayama Nanari.
The first place one enters in the Hida country is the Gero Valley, which is famous for its hot springs. In Gero Onsen, it seems that they stayed at Yunoshimakan, a long-established hot spring hotel, and the text says, “We stayed at an old-fashioned inn halfway up the mountain. It was indeed the hometown of the Hida masters, and the construction was superb.
He also commented that the rooms were well designed, saying, “The rooms in particular were good. I stayed in a room with elegant Kyoto-style walls, simplified Toyama ranma, and all of the ranma, pillars, and shoji screens were painted in peach-colored Shunkei lacquer, giving the room a subdued elegance. The painting is described as follows.
Looking at the inn’s website, it appears that one can stay at the inn for around 30,000 yen per night, making it a place that one would like to visit at least once. Shunkei” in the Shunkei lacquerware mentioned here is the name of a person. It is made by boiling a red dye called Suho with finely crushed wood, first dyeing the wood base with it, and then finishing it with a coat of transparent lacquer.
The person who discovered this aesthetic and spread it throughout the country was the Kanamori clan, a feudal lord of Hida Takayama in the Edo period (1603-1868). Originally, Hida was home to the Anekoji clan of court nobles, and the Kyoto-style culture took root there.
After spending the night in Gero, the group continued north along the Masuda River on the “Masuda Highway” until reaching a mountain pass and entering Hida Takayama.
Hida Takayama is a place where old buildings from the Edo period still remain, and in the text, “Not only large ones such as the Kusakabe family in the city of Takayama, which are often introduced, but also just ordinary private houses are beautiful enough. First of all, the slope is shallow, and the roof is light and comfortable without feeling hot. Even if the main body is made of new construction materials, as long as it has this roof, it shows the quality of the Hida style. The topic of the building is described as follows.
It has also been noted that the design of these houses is similar to the half-timbering found in the wood-rich Scandinavian houses.
After touring through the city of Hida, we paid a visit to the Mizunashi Jingu Shrine, the first shrine in Hida Province.
Again, regarding the architecture, he said, “Once inside the kyo, the buildings are good, just like Hida. The main shrine is good, and the ema-den (shrine for votive tablets) is also good. The main hall is good, and the ema-den is also good. In a corner of the Kyouchi, there is a shrine like a shrine for sacred horses, which is decorated with sculptures made by Hidari Jingoro, a sculptor active in the early Edo period (1603-1868). The sculpture of the Sleeping Cat at Nikko Toshogu Shrine and the dragon at Kan-eiji Temple in Tokyo are also by the same master carver.
From Mizunashi Shrine, head to Matsukurayama for a view of the Hida cityscape, then to Mozumi and back to Takayama for a meal at Susaki, a ryotei restaurant said to have been in existence since the late Edo period.
Hida Takayama is also famous for the Takayama Festival held in spring and fall.
The Takayama Festival is one of Japan’s three major Hikiyama festivals and one of Japan’s three most beautiful festivals, along with the Gion Festival in Kyoto City and the Chichibu Night Festival in Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, as the floats called “yatai” are pulled in a parade through the city.
Surrounded by beautiful mountains where you can feel the changing seasons on your skin, Hida Takayama will be a town full of various attractions such as hot spring resorts, historical buildings, local cuisine with unique food culture, and traditional crafts.
In the next article, we will discuss the various roads in Shimabara and Amakusa.
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