Yuko Ikeda's
Home Page
Let me introduce myself. My name is
Yuko Ikeda. I was born in Sakaide City, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan
on June 28, 1984.
I an.m a first year
student at Kagawa Junior College. My major is Infant Education.
My hobbies are going
shopping with friends and listening to music.
My home page address
is:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/CollegeLife-Labo/4001/2004/503005.html
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Links
My Friends
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My Favorite
Region
Quoted from
the Shikoku Bilingual Guidebook by Akiko
Takemoto and Steve McCarty.
PREFACE
Visiting or living in Shikoku is something
special, for this island has always been the spiritual sanctuary
of the Japanese people. No other place in Japan has been visited
by so many generations 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
than 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, moro 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 remain very hard to reach.
This pilgrimage circling the island
is nationally known as O-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 wellto what Shikoku offers - the Seto Island Sea, the
Uwa-kai Sea, the Pacific Osean, the green moutains that crown
a large part of the island, cosy little towns and middle-sized
cities that fringe the coasts.
Its climate is mind; 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 sentury. Until then the northern coast of Shikoku
was among the first areas to enjoy civilization in Japan, as proved
by so many archaeological findings.
Remoto as it was for many centuries,
however, Shikoku did not stand aloof but observed movements on
the Island Sea as an artery of Japan's cultural, politicai and
economic development. On the other hand, Shikoku's unique attractions
such as the Shikoku Pilgrimage, Kompira worship and the Dogo Onsen
Hot Spring spa have always drawn a large number of people from
the capitalsb and other parts of the main island of Honshu and
neighboring Kyushu.
Naturally those visitors brought something
new with them each time, just as refugees and exiles from the
capitals added color to the siland's histoty. 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 dimension rewarding
travelers to this island.
A new type of attracation 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 connecying Shikoku with the main island, pleasure resots,
theme parks, museums, skyline drives and relatively inexpensive
golf courses. So the charm of Shikoku can rightly be called an
exquisite coexistence of tradition and mondernity, nature and
art.
Last but not least is a spiritual
climate of Shikoku that has produced people like the father of
the Shikoku Pilgrimage, who is often credited as a father of Japanese
cultre, the man who aired the idea of the Seto Ohashi Bridge,
and two young men who turned out to be most instrumental in
Seto Inland
Sea
The Seto Inland Sea narrowly separates
there main islands of Japan, stretching about 440 km 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 shopping, yet others are know 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:
1. Awajishima 2. Shodoshima
3. Honjima 4.omishima 5.Ikuchishima 6. Miyajima
The Seto Inland Sea a Witness
of Japan's History
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, 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 (osaka) or Yamato (Nara). 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 current, 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
Koreav - 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. Fijiwara no
Sumitomo is famous for one such escapade. After quitting the
lordship of lyo (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 instrumental
in the history of the centuries that followed. The central government
enlisted suigun to patrol the sea, to suppress pirates and
to guard its trading ships 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 that war marked the fall of the
refined Heian civilization that flourished in Kyoto. Kono Michinobu,
whose suigun had contributed to bringing about the new
era of the Kamakura Shogunate, was appointed by the Shogun 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
Wako - 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 Shoguns stop the Wako. To defend herself against Wako,
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, siik fabrics, books and so on from
China.
During the Civil War Period (1477-1573),
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 Hideyosi, who
succeded Nobunaga and unified Japan, restricted sword ownership
to the samurai class. He severely banned piracy, having
decided that society had to be strictly regulated to ensure peace.
Now pirates found their heyday was gone, and so did the suigun
clans, most of whom had already been incorporated into the feudal
domains of the Daimyos.
Only the suigun of the Shiwaku
Inslands were privileged to continue their activities because
of the great assistance they had given to Nobunaga and Hideyosi.
Soon after the unification of Japan in 1590, Hideyosi 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 Shogunate, established
in 1603 in Edo(Tokyo), was careful enough to put Osaka, 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 Shogunate adopted a national isolation policy
with a small island in Nagasaki Harbor as a window 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 Shogunate.
In 1672 'westward route' was opened,
leading all the coastal trade of the Japan Sea side into the Island
Sea up to the port of Osaka. Now 70% of Japan's commodities passed
through Osaka, earning this town the nickname of 'Kitchen of the
Country'. Some merchants were so wealthy that even Daimyos borrowed
money from them. Many of the local soecialities date back to this
time when each Daimyo 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 Island talked of the great
merits of visiting 'Kompira-san' and 'O-Shikoku-san' while sailing
around the coast of the mation not only as the Shogun's seamen
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 came from Kyushu, Shikoku and westernmost
Honshu.
In the 1870's when Jaoan's modernization
started, Osaka, Kobe and Kita-Kyushu 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 century, the Inland Sea will see even greater changes
througt the three routes conneciting Honshu and Shikoku by bridges.
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