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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 33 Aizu Sirakawa.
In the previous article, I described a trip around Kino River in Wakayama Prefecture. This time, I will describe the Shirakawa/Aizu region.
Road to Shirakawa and Aizu
This trip is in Fukushima Prefecture. The route is the Shirakawa-Aizu Road. The route will take us to Sakai no Myojin, the border between the Kanto and Tohoku regions, Shirakawa no Seki, of which no clear trace remains, Oiwake no Myojin, and Inugami Dam. Entering Shirakawa City, the tour will visit Sekigawa-dera Temple, which is associated with Munehiro Yuki, lord of Shirakawa Castle, and then visit the Shirakawa Harist Orthodox Church, where an icon painted by Rin Yamashita, an icon painter of the Meiji era, is on display. After that, the tour will visit Ouchi-juku, an inn town that remains as it was in the Edo period, and then extend to Aizu City to visit the tomb of Ujisato Gamo, the lord of Aizu at the end of the 16th century who developed the castle town, Iimoriyama, where the Byakkotai (a group of Japanese warriors who were killed by the Shogunate in Edo period) committed suicide, and the tomb and Ehiji temple of the Matsudaira family who were active in the Shinsengumi, the Shogunate’s military wing in the Edo period.
It is said that in ancient Japan, in the late Edo period, Oshu and Michinoku were places of poetic longing. For example, just hearing the word “Miyagino,” one thinks of a field of autumn grasses. It also makes one think of the winds of Mutsu, which blow across the fields far away. Today, the name of this place is simply the city of Sendai.
The name “Shinobu” is now just Fukushima City, the capital of Fukushima Prefecture (formerly Nobu-sho, Nobu-gun), but when people in the Heian period heard it, it was more than just a place name, as it conjured up images of the heart of a love that was torn in a thousand different directions. In ancient times, the area of Nobuo in Oshu produced silk cloth with a random pattern.
The pattern is said to have been created by placing a piece of white silk on top of a giant stone with a disorderly pattern and then draping it with grass.
Minamoto Toru, an aristocrat of the Heian period, was a leading Mutsu enthusiast of the time. The present-day Kikokutei in Kyoto is said to be the site of Kawahara-in, a villa run by Minamoto Toru, and it is said that Kawahara-in was an elegant garden, which later became the ancestor of the kaiyu-style garden in Kyoto.
Because of the reputation of Kawahara-in, he was called “Minister Kawahara” or “Minister Kawahara”. This garden was a “small Michinoku” in Kyoto, and was created by copying the scenery of Shiogama in Oshu. Kawahara-in was a salon for writers and artists of the time in Kyoto, and when people saw this garden, they were reminded that the mountains and rivers of Michinoku are the essence of elegance.
This is Minamoto no Toru, and he composed a poem in the Kokin Waka Shu that uses the aforementioned Shinobu-mozuri.
Mutsu no shinobu mojizuri, who therefore thinks that he is in disorder, but he is not.
This means, “I am not the kind of person who, like the disorderly pattern of Mutsu shinobu mojizuri, would give up my body and mind to the demands of someone other than you. It continued for nearly 1,000 years (at least until the end of the Edo period).
The name of the river “Natorigawa” also became a poem simply because it was located in Mutsu.
The name of the river “Natorigawa Naki” (Mutsu no Natorigawa naki nakitakaritakari) was used as the title of a poem.
This means, “There is a river in Europe called Natori River, but in my case, I am suffering because of a name (or rumor) that does not exist.
The city of Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture was a swamp called “Azumi no Numa” in the Heian period (794-1185), and the people of Kyoto called the iris-like flowers that bloomed near the water “hana-katsumi” (flower cuttlefish), which was highly prized.
In later times, when Matsuo Basho came to the Koriyama area on his journey along the Okunohosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North), he looked for the “hana-katsumi” but could not find it because no one knew of it.
He visited swamps and asked people about “katsumi katsumi,” and the sun went down at the edge of the mountain.
The day ended up at the edge of the mountain, and the humorous episode of “katsumi katsumi” became famous.
Tokyo belongs to the Kanto region, but as a culture, it is said to be far removed from the original Kanto. Some people think that Kanto outside of Tokyo is largely one with Tohoku, and some feel that it is the same as the eastern part of the country.
The earliest areas of Kanto were Hitachinokuni (Hitachi-no-kuni; most of today’s Ibaraki Prefecture), Kazusa-no-kuni (Kazusa Province; today’s central Chiba Prefecture), and Ueno (Kozuke-no-kuni; today’s Gunma Prefecture), which were ruled by the Taira family, the great-grandsons of Emperor Kanmu, who came from the capital to rule over these areas. The Taira became warriors in the provinces where the capital had no influence.
The Minamoto clan was a little later than the Taira, and during the reign of Minamoto no Yorinobu, he served as chief of the Ueno and Hitachi-no-kuni, and then became shogun of the Chinjufu shogunate, going to Oshu and winning over the warriors of the Kanto and Oshu regions.
The conflict between the Heike and Minamoto clans, which became a major event in the history of the samurai in Japan, began in 1031 when Taira no Tadatsune started a rebellion as an extension of his own internal conflict, which was then defeated by Minamoto no Yorinobu. After this incident, the Minamoto clan expanded its power in the Kanto region, and as described in “Mutsu-no Michi” (The Road of Mutsu), the Minamoto clan established a firm foothold in the region in the Previous Nine Years’ War Later Three Years’ War, and about 140 years later, Minamoto no Yoritomo founded the Kamakura shogunate in Kamakura, as described in “Miura Peninsula Chronicle.
The Shirakawa-Aizu route begins at Shin-Shirakawa Station on the Tohoku Shinkansen Line.
This station is also a bit far from the city center commuting area, which can be reached in 1 hour and 25 minutes from Ueno by the Tohoku Shinkansen. Fukushima Prefecture, where Aizu is located, is the second largest prefecture in Japan (Iwate Prefecture is the largest). Weather forecasts are therefore divided into three regions: Hamadori (Soma City and Iwaki City on the Pacific coast), Nakadori (lowlands along the main stream of the Abukuma River, including Fukushima City, Nihonmatsu City, Koriyama City, and Shirakawa City), and the Aizu Basin (Aizu Wakamatsu City), each with a different culture.
Shirakawa Seki is located in the Nakadori Street in the middle of this area. In 1800, Matsudaira Sadanobu, the lord of the Shirakawa domain, declared the area around the present Shirakawa Shrine, where an empty moat and earthen mound still remain, to be the Shirakawa-no-seki, and established the “Old Sekiseki (barrier site),” which was later named “Shirakawa-no-seki” by the Shirakawa government.
Furthermore, excavations were conducted for five years starting in 1959, and the site was designated as a national historic site as it was highly likely to be the Shirakawa Seki.
On the other hand, “Myojin of Sakai” is mentioned in Kaido Yuku. This is the common name for two shrines that stand side by side on the border between Shirakawa City and Nasu Town, Tochigi Prefecture, and from Shirakawa, the Mutsu side (Shirakawa City) enshrines Tamatsushima Myojin (goddess, Koromitsuhime) and the Shimono side (Nasu Town, Tochigi Prefecture) Sumiyoshi Myojin (male deity, Nakatsutsu-o-mikoto), which is the exact location on the border between Kanto and Tohoku.
Oshu is also famous for its large deposits of gold, such as at Yamizo Mountain on the border of Ibaraki and Fukushima.
In the town of Shirakawa, Ryotaro Shiba visited Sekigawa-dera Temple, a Soto sect temple. In front of the temple’s cloister, there is a spring with a sign explaining that it is called “Eihei-hanshakusui” (literally, “Eihei-hanshakusui”). Dogen, the founder of the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism, was a great admirer of etiquette and believed that etiquette was the essence of thought (sakuho kore sozo). Dogen said that water is life, and that he was returning the water to the valley for the sake of a hundred billion people in the future.
The group found a small church in the town of Shirakawa called Shirakawa Orthodox Church Cathedral. The first Russian Orthodox missionary in Japan was Father Nikolai, who built the Resurrection Cathedral (commonly known as Nikolai Hall) in Kanda, Tokyo, in 1891.
A bulletin board inside the church reads, “Inside the church are oil and lithograph iconostas (sacred image paintings), including works by Rin Yamashita, 26 of which are designated as important cultural properties.
Yamashita Rin was a female painter born at the end of the Edo period, and became an artist who continued to write Russian Orthodox iconography (icons).
Yamashita Rin was born in Hitachi nokuni (Ibaraki Prefecture), born to a samurai family, and after the Meiji Restoration, his family’s finances became difficult, so he refused an offer to marry into a farming family and persuaded his family to send him to Tokyo to train as a painter. She was baptized and entered a convent in Petersburg, Russia, where she spent time as a nun painting icons. After returning to Japan, she apparently turned part of a women’s seminary in Surugadai, Kanda, into her painting studio and continued to produce icons.
Rin Yamashita‘s icons have a unique Renaissance style that is far removed from the general Russian Orthodox icon format, in which the artist’s individuality is bound by a set of rules and made impersonal.
The journey moves to Aizu-Wakamatsu, where the story is about the Boshin War. The Aizu domain‘s Matsudaira Katamori, who was active at the end of the Edo period, tried his best to restore the Edo shogunate, but he was abandoned by Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who quickly showed his respect for the shogunate and Restoration of Imperial Rule, forcing him to fight against the new government forces composed of Satcho and Doi.
Originally, the new government forces had hoped to make the revolution a success by fighting the Tokugawa Shogunate and winning, but the last Tokugawa shogun, Yoshinobu Tokugawa, vacated Edo Castle without blood and was confined to house arrest at Kan-eiji Temple in Ueno. In response, the Ou (Tohoku region) and Hokuetsu (Niigata) clans agreed with the Aizu clan and formed the “Ouetsu Row Domain Alliance” to fight the new government forces in what became known as the “Boshin War“.
In the Boshin War, the alliance of the clans had the upper hand at the beginning of the war, and even among foreigners in the Yokohama area, the existence of the new government was in doubt, but as Yoshinobu Tokugawa left the stage early (thus, the revolution called the Meiji Restoration did not cause any major cracks in Japan and the transition of power went relatively smoothly), the Tokugawa clan could no longer have a cause. The Aizu clan was the only one that remained, and it was isolated.
In Aizuwakamatsu, the trip ended with a remembrance of Tokuichi, a scholar of phrenology who argued with Saicho, and the stories of Ujisato Gamo, who created the name Aizuwakamatsu, and Masayuki Hoshina, who created the Aizu culture in the Edo period (he was a child of the second shogun Hidetada and half brother of the third shogun Iemitsu, but was adopted into the Hoshina family).
In the next article, I will discuss the Akasaka walk.
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