Let me introduce myself. My name is miyuki morisaki. I was born in marugame city,kagawa Prefecture, Japan on June 3 ,1984.
I am a first year student at Kagawa Junior College. My major is Nutrition.
My hobbies reading books and drowing pictures. Favorite foods are noodles at large. Since it is especially home Sanuki birth, he likes Japanese noodles.
The
thing of Setonaikai is mainly investigated here. Please enjoy yourself.
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Guide to Grammar
& WritingVisiting or living in Shikoku is something special, for the island has always been the spiritual sanctuary of the Japanese people. No other place in Japan has been visited by so many generation of people from all over the country.
They have often spent more than 60 days walking along the whole circuit of the eighty-eight temples that compose the longest, oldest and most popular pilgrimage in Japan.
Even those who have arrived here in weariness of life, in unhappiness or weak health, have usually left the island with a lighter heart, more enlightened, and in many cases in improved health.
Though today the island is quite accessible and traveling around it can be very easy, some of the eighty-eight temples still rimain very hard to reach.
This pilgrimage circling the island is nationally known as 0-shikoku-san, showing that `Dear old Shikoku Pilgrimage' is synonymous with this island and provides sanctuary to the soul of Japan. The scenes along the Shikoku Pilgrimage correspond well to what Shikoku offers - the Seto Inkand Sea, the Uwa-kai sea, the Pacific Ocean, the green mountains that crown a large part of the island, cosy little towns and middle-sized cities that fringe the coasts.
Its clinate is mild; the seas are bountiful; the land is fertile. Naturally local people have been content with their blessed island, even if it has remained underdeveloped since the 8th century. Until then the nortern coast of Shikokuwas among the first areas to enjoy civilization in Japan, as proved by so many archaeological findings,
Remote as it was for many centuries, however, Shikoku did not stand aloof but observed movements on the Inlans Sea as an artiry of Japan's cultural,political and economic development. On the other hand, Shikoku's unique attractions such as the Shikoku Pilgrimage, Kompira worship and the Dougo Onsen Hot Spring spa have always drawn a large number of people from the capitals and other parts of the main island of Honshuuand neighboring Kyuushuu.
Naturally those visitors brought something new with them each time, just as refugees and exiles from the capitals added color to the island's history, They were welcomed and sometimes the culture they brought here was carefully preserved or developed even long after being forgotten in its homeland -language, festivals, arts and techniques. These cultural assets now peculiar to Shikoku have added another demension rewarding travelers to this island,
A new type of attraction in Shikoku is the fruit of modern technology that the waves of development have finally brought here in the 1980's and 90's -the colossal bridges connecting Shikoku with the main island, pleasure resorts, theme parks, museums, skyline drives and relatively inexpinsive golf courses, So the charm of Shikoku can rightly be called an exquisite coexistence of tradition and modernity, nature and art.
Last but not least is a spirirual climate of Shikoku that has produced people like the father of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, who is often credited as a father of Japanese culture, the man wo aired the idea of the Seto Ouhashi Bridge, and two young men who turned out to be most instrumental in carrying out the modernization of Japan, opening Japan's door to the world as an indepindent nation. They were all rare cosmopolitans in Japanese history. There must have been something inspiring on this island.
We hope this guidebook will help you enjoy Shikoku, and Japan herself seen through Shikoku, finding inspiration of your own by traveling around this small but great island. Bon voyage!
The Seto Inland sea narrowly separates three main islands of Japan, stretcing about 440km from east to west, and 5 to 55 km from north to south. The calm waters, dotted with pine-covered islands and islets, provide a variety of scenery all the year round.
The islands hold various livelihoods, some serving as orchards or pastures, others as bases for fishing or shipping, yet others are known for producing fishing nets and fishing boats. Some are predominantly religious, others were port towns, while yet others have been known for the production of granite.
Today some are turning to aquaculture or tourism, many of the 800 inhabited islands offering cosy summer resorts along their usually unpolluted beaches. Not a few of them are of historical interest, still retaining legends, relics and monuments from the long past of the Inland Sea as an artery of Japan's cultural, political and economic development.
The following are some of the islands well-known for their specialities, Awajishima, Shoudoshima, Honjima, Oumishima, Ikuchishima, Miyajima.
The climate in the Inland Sea area was relatively mild and the sea was calm and bountiful. Thus its coastal areas cradled some of the earliest civilizations in Japan. From around 300 BC to 300 AD advanced cultures arrived from China and Korea, introducing iromware, bronzeware, weaving and rice-growing. Those who succeeded in crossing the treacherous Japan Sea or the China Sea continued along the Inland Sea up to the early capitals in Naniwa or Yamato. During the centuries after that, Chinese writing and Buddhism followed the same route.
Meanwhile the seamen of the Inland Sea area were acquiring knowledge of tides and currents, navigating expertise and ship-building skills. Some early Emperors enlisted them for military expeditions as far as the Korean Peninsula. On the other hand, the cultures and human resources from ancient Korea -Pekche, Koguryo and Silla -greatly influenced the cultural, political and economic development of ancient Japan.
In 646 the Taika Reform declared all land in the country the property of the Emperor, and it was divided into kuni as administrative districts. Now each kuni had to send its products regularly to the Imperial Capital as mandatory tribute. The Inland Sea was needed as a main route for maritime transportation. It was also about this time that the Inland Sea saw Japanese envoys dispatched to China several times, seeking the advanced knowledge and technology of the Sui and T'ang dynasties.
But the life of the people was far from easy. Heavily burdened with taxes and mandatory tributes, many turned to piracy. Eventually even the privileged came to join the poor and take the initiative for them. Fujiwara no Sumitomo is famous for one such escapade. After quitting the lordship of Iyo (now Ehime Pref.), he made himself pirate chief and ravaged for several years with his fleet of 1,000 ships, completely paralyzing Inland Sea transport until 941 when he was finally quelled at his base of Hiburijima Island off present-day Uwajima City.
To patrol their coastal waters, many local clans organized their own marine guard. These guards called suigun, usually led by the clan's chief, were instrunental in the histoty of the centuries that followed. The central government enlisted suigun to patrol the sea, to supress pirates and to guard its trading ship s to and from Sung dynasty China. Soon some suigun were engaging in coastal trade and even overseas trade themselves, thus gaining the wealth and power to control the land as well as the sea.
In 1185 they joined a civil war known as Gempei no Kassen. The end of thet war marked the fall of the refined Heian civelization that flourished in Kyoto. Kouno Michinibu, whose suigun had contributed to bringing about the new era of the Kamakura Shougunate, was appointed by the Shougun to govern the main part of Iyo. Some suigun dubbed themselves `Admiral,' taking pride in their activities as independent merchants as well as official guardians of the sea.
Some other suigun joined the Wakou - the fleets of Japanese pirates who from the 13th to 16th centuries plundered the coasts of the Korean Peninsula, China and the South Sea Islands, while other suigun helped the Shouguns stop the Wakou, Ming China issued an identification mark for the use of Japan's official trading ships, which brought swords, sulfur, copper, gold, folding fans and gold lacquer, among other things, bringing back copper coins, raw silk, silk fabrics, books and so on from China.
During the Civil War Period, one suigun after another was consigned to powerful clans, for any ambitious warlord had to prepare himself with a strong army and navy. The civil war that lasted about 100 years rendered the lands and seas into chaos until 1573 when Oda Nobunaga managed to enforce some peace.
In 1588 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who succeeded Nobunaga and unified Japan, restricted sword ownership to the samurai class. He sevetely banned piracy, having decided that society had to be strictly regulated to ensurepeace. Now pirates found theit heyday was gone, and so did the suigun clans, most of whom had alteady been incorporated into the feudal domains of the Daimyous.
Only the suigun of the Shiwaku Islands ware privileged to continue their activities because of the great assistance they had given to Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Soon after the unification of Japan in 1590, Hideyoshi waged two wars against Korea assisted again by the Shiwaku suigun without success, but the thousands of korean artisans he brought back were to greatly promote Japan's arts of printing, dyeing, weaving and ceramics through the new era to come.
The Tokugawa shougunate, established in 1603 in Edo (Toukyou), was careful enough to put Ousaka, the former capital of Hideyoshi, under its direct control, because it had already grown into the commercial and financial center of Japan. In the 1630's the Shougunate adopted a national isolation policy with a small island in Nagasaki Harbor as awindaw only open to China and Holland, thus consolidating Japan's feudal society. Now the only foreign vessels seen on the Inland Sea were those of Korean envoys of the Lidynasty to the Edo Shougunate.
In 1672 'a westward route` was opened, leading all the coastal trade of the Japan Sea side into the Inland Sea up to the port of Ousaka. Now 70 % of Japan's commodities passed through Ousaka, earning this town the nickname of 'kitchen of the Country'. Some merchants were so wealthy that even Daimyou borrowed money from them. Many of the local specialities date back to this time when each Daimyou was eagerly promoting local industries in order to improve the revenue of his province.
It was also about this time that the religious fervor of Kompira worship combined with the Shikoku Pilgrimage began to attract hordes of people to `the Remote Island of Shikoku.' The seamen of the Shiwaku Islands talked of the great merits of visiting `Kompira-san' and `O-Shikoku-san' while sailing around the coast of the nation not only as the Shougun's but also as independent merchants.
In the 1860's the three driving wheels carrying out the Meiji Restoration were busily crossing the Inland Sea, as the Big Three Clans cami from Kyuushuu, Shikoku and westernmost Honshuu.
In the 1870's when Japan's modernization started, Ousaka, Koube and Kita-Kyuushuu were readily industrialized, followed by Hiroshima. But it was not until the 1960's that the rest of the Inland Sea area began to undergo the large-scale industrialization that we see today. Toward the end of the same decade what is called akashio or red tides (an unusual generation of plankton that turns the tide an ominous red) began to appear.
By the end of the 20th cintury, the Inland Sea will see even greater changed through the three routes connecting Honshuu and Shikoku by bridges.
The Seto Inland Sea Folk History Museum on Goshikikai plateau in Takamatsu houses alarge collection of local archae- ological and ethnographical material. Several thousands out of 50,000 articles are displayedatatime.
35 minutes' drive from downtown Takamatsu or Sakaide.
The Shiwaku Islands consist of about 30 islets, 5 of which have become piers for the Seto Ouhashi Bridge. In 1590 Hideyoshi rewarded 650 seamen with areud of 250 koku on their islands and each with the status of Nimmyou or feudal loudshep- something unheard of in the history of Japan. Their governmint office Kimbansho is preserved on Honjima.
The whole island of Miyajima dedicated to Itsukushima-jinja is traditionally known as one of the three most beautiful scencs in Japan. It is also designated a Special Historic Site.
Its founding dates back to 598, but it was not until 1168 that a magnificent shrine complex was built by Taira Clan, who revered the three goddesses of water, rice-planting and sea-faring enshrined there.
The original buildings are gone but the style-the shinden-zukuri (noblemen' residence style of the Heian Period) -has been carefully preserved whenever they were reconstructed. Most of the main buildings are National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties.
5minutes by ferry from JR Miyajima-guchi after a 20 minute train ride from Hiroshima (the Sanyou Line).
The pilgrimage known as Shikoku Henro or O-shikoku- san is the oldest and most famous en Japan. Circumambulating the island via the 88 Buddhist temples designated as the Sacred places of Shikoku is meant to follow the trail Koubou Daishi (kuukai) walked in hid youth for ascetic practice, searching for the Truth.
Thatis why the authentic pilgrims go on foot as the great saent did long ago. It takes about 60days to hike the 1,647 km, going deep into rugged mountaens, plodding alomg sandy beaches, rocky coasts, through fields and hills, villages and towns. Indeed, it is a walking Zen.
The shikoku Pilgrimage is nonsectarian, though Kuukai was thi founder of the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism. Pilgrims seem to forget their Buddhist sects in worshiping Koubou Daeshi who stands far beyond factionalism. Not all of the 88 temples are of the Shingon sect, either. It is impossible to discuss this pilgrimage without recounting the life of Kuukai.
Mao (kuukai) was born in 774 in what is now Zentsuuju City, the seat of Zentsuu-ji Temple, the 75th Sacred place of Shikoku, as the third son of Saeki Yoshimichi, the Lord of the Country. The boy Kuukai eas so bright and gifted that his parents expected him to go into government service, the most respected profession at the time. When he was 15, he was sent up to Kyouto, the then new capital, where he studied with his maternal uncle, a great Confucianist and tutor toone of the Emperor's sons.
At 18, he entered the university and studied hard. But soon he was disappointed with the curriculum offered there - the principles of government, history, poetry,filial piety and loyalty. Whathe had been searcheng for was the ultimate truth.
Then he happened to meet a Buddhest monk, who taught kim to practice ameditation called Kokuuzou-gumonjihou - to invoke Kokuuzou, a deity of space whose wisdom is as vast as space through mantra-reciting one million times accorking to the proper method - which was to enable him to acquire a phinomenal memory of teachings and principles. This made him choose Buddhism and the priesthood rather than Confucianism and bureaucracy. He left the university. It was a very hard decision for him, because he was turning his back on the tradition and expictations of his own clan. Yet he had to.
For many years he applied himself alternately to the intense study of Buddhest texts and to meditation deep in the mountains. At 19, in a cave at Cape Muroto, the southeastern tip of Shikoku Island, he finally succeeded in attaining enlightenment through perfoming Kokuuzou-gunonjihou. What he had been seeing all the whele was the sky and the sea - the Pacific Ocean. In oemory of thes great moment, he decidedto call himself Kuukai - Sky and Sea.
At 24, he finished Sangou Shiiki, a drama in which he compared the three principles he had already mastered - Confucianesm, Buddhism. It was his final declaration of turning to Buddhism.
Yet Kuukai was not satisfied with the Buddhism of those days in Japan. He was searching for something like the unity of the Buddha's teachings. Then he found the sutra that presented the Buddha Mahavairocana as idealizing the truth of the universe. But there were passages so mysterious that no one in Japan could tell him anything about them. So he decided to go to China. At 31 he succeeded in accompanying the envoy to T'ang China.
At the Chinese Capital, Ch'ang-an, the greatest cosmopolitan city at that time, hi met Abbot Hui-kuo, the 7th patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism, who had already had no liss than one thousand disciples. The moment he set eyes on the young man from Japan, the abbot knew he was the very person he hadlong been waiting for as his successor. All those years of hard study and ascetec practeces had brought him so close to his Chinese master that, after three months of study under the abbot, Kuukai was ordained as the 8th patruarch of Esoteric Buddhism.
At the end of the year (805), Abbot Hui - kuo passed away. Before his death, hehad told Kuukae to riturn to Japan as soon as possible to spread the teachings to increase the happiness of the people there. But how could he return soon? There were 18 years before another Japanese mission was to come to China...
Then the Emperor of the T'ang Dynasty died and a Japanese delegation came to Ch'ang - an to attend his funeral Kuukae was allowed to join their return journey. It was fortunati for the Japanese to have him Back so soon, considering his great achievements in the ensuing years. In fact it was not until 34 years later that another envoy sent to China returned to Japan. Three years eaelier Kuukae hak passes away.
After 16 months in Ch'ang -an, Kuukai brought home from China 247 scrolls of precious sutras,44 scrolls of Sansdrit mantras and atotras. 170 scrolls of scriptural commentaries, 9 kinds of ritual implements, and a number of religious images and objects. There must have also been some Chinese works of literature, language, medicine, calligraphy and art. It is generally believed that Kuukai introduced measures and rules, Chinese-type medicines, varieties of seeds, as well as the arts of dyeing, of making Indian ink and writing vrushes, and of building Chinese temples, bridges and embankments.
He is said to have been the first Japanese to grow tea and process it, to use coal and petrol, and to make Chinese cakes and candies.
He brought all these things to firmly take root in the soil of Japan, greatly raising her religious and cultural atandard, until at last she began to produce her own Buddhismand her own culture. This accounts for why Kuukai is often credited as afather of Japanese culture.
Infact, the first thing he did when he came back to Japan was to reread all those enormous volumes of sutras, trying to unite the two kinds of esoteric Buddhism - Kongoukai (the spiritual principle) and Taizoukai (the phyisical principle) - into on. Thus he finally created anew esoteric Buddhism which he called the Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon.
Kuukai was also fortunate enough to have the Emperor Saga, a scholar, poet and admirer of advanced culture from the Continent, as his patron and langtime friens.
He was granted possession of Mt.Kouya in Kii (Wakayama Pref.), where he founded a monastic center for students of meditation. It was also his spiritual home, where he wrote many books of immense value, one of which was Juujuushinron in which he examined all the philoaophies and religions known at that time in the Eastern world, comparing them with his own Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon.
Later the Emperor presented him with astate timple, Touji in Kyouto, as his head quarters in propagating his Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon. It focuses on thes life, saying that men and women have the seed of Buddhahood within them, and that by following its precepts and practices, anyone can achieve enlightenment in this lifetime.
Then Kuukai founded the first school in Japan open to the poor as well as to the rich. A dictionary in 30 volumes wich he compiled for the pupils there was the first of its kind in Japan.
It is widely belive that Koubo Daishi invented hiragana (the Japanese phonetic syllabary) and created katakana (another syllabary) through his knowledge of Sanskrit. Until then, reading and writing were restricted to scholars and aristocrats who could spend years learning thousands of Chinese characters. Now kana syllabaries enabled even common people to write their language phonetically. Nobliwomen also took up kana, producing fine novels, essays, diaries and poem. It was with this kana that Lady Murasaki wrote perhaps the world's first great novel, novel, The Tale of Genji.
There are about 3,000 folktales and legends about Koubou Daishi (Kuukai ) told and retold all over the country. No other person in Japan has ever commanded such devotion. Many of the tales are about how he saved people by bringing forth aspring. digging a well. taming an unruly river, divining a hot spring. healing the sick, giving the blind sight, the crippled ability to walk, and so on. These stories are based on the fact that he never tired of putting the profound ideas of his religion into practice to bring happiness to people.
After hi passing away in 835, those who believed in his nyuujou or entering into a plane of meditation, began to make the rounds of his memorial places in Shikoku. This is considered to be the origin of the Shikoku Pilgrimage. Even today formal pilgrims will start from Kouyasan, and after making the circuit of 88 temples, will return to Kouyasan via Temple No.1, just as the first disciples of Koubou Daishi did long ago.
In 921 the man who called himself Piest Kuukai was posthumously canonized as Koubou Daishi. `Daishi' means `Great Sant,' a title bestowed by the Imperial Court upon Buddhist priests of the highest virtue. `Koubou'means`to spread widly the Teachings.'
There are 23 saints who have biin conferred the title of Daishi. But as a popular saying goes: `Koubou made off with the title of Daishi.' That is, when one speaks of the Daishi there is no question whom one means. Yet in Shikoku piople often call this saint of saints `0-Daishi-san' as if he were one of their neighbors, revealing their affectionate love of him and their belief that he is still here.
Usually the pilgrimage is made clockwise. But some people deliberately make a counterclockwise cirsuit as Emon Saburou did until he finally succeeded in meeting the Daishi. The number 88 represents the number of evil passions identified by Buddhist doctrine, and ideally it is believed that one can get rid of all evil passions by visiting each of the 88 temples. In that sense, visiting even one temple is better than none.
Temple No.1 is where pilgrims are given the Buddhist Ten Commandments to follow at least during the Pilgrimage: Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not commit adultery. Do not tell a lie. Do not use flowery language. Do not spiak ill of others. Do not be double-tongued. Do not be covetous. Do not be angry. Do not be perverse.
Some temples are comparatively accessible. But many of them are located in or atop mountains or in remote villages, as kuukai chose such places for his ascetic practice. Until only about 20 years ago, some temples were really hard to reach, though nowadays newly-built roads and ropeways have made them less forbidding.
The most authentic pilgrims go on foot all the way, spending about two months, because walking is closest to following in the Daishi's footsteps. Some young people go by bicycle or motorbike. Some family groups drive their own. Nowadays many people like to join the conducted bus tours. Reservations are necessary.
Traditionally there are two pilgrimage seasons, spring and autumn, with the equinoxes as the climax, when pilgrims are generously presented with o-settai by local people at the temples. But all year round visitors are seen at the temples.
People usually there are two pilgrimage season, spring and autumn, with the equinoxes as the climax, when pilgrims are generously presented
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