Land of the Rising Sun: Part A

When I arrived in Kotohira, I stopped off at the local NTT DoCoMo store, where my travel guide said that there were English pamphlets available, but there were none. I hoped I wouldn't get lost, but I needn't have worried. The main attraction at Kotohira was the shrine Kompira-san, up on a mountain. The shrine was reached by steps. Even though you had to navigate city streets to reach the steps, turning a couple of corners, you could never lose your way. There were too many tourist traps along the route for you to ever miss it.

First photo: a temple-ish looking building that wasn't on the mountain. Second photo: on the steps up Kompira-san. You can almost see this tori gate through the signs and awnings of tourist traps.

And so I walked through city streets and then found the base of the stairs and started walking, weaving past hordes of slower climbers. There were plenty of distractions to slow them down. The stairs were lined with shops selling souvenirs, film, snacks, toys, beverages, walking sticks. It had all the charm of San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, which is to say, none.

Still, I was determined to visit this shrine. It was a famous sailor's shrine. I was determined not to try to visit many shrines and temples--there's generally not a lot of variation. And if I was just going to visit one shrine, this seemed like the one.

And so I climbed and climbed and smiled at shopkeepers who called out to me but I did not stop. And eventually, I moved beyond the area of the shops. Once you climb enough stairs, you're at the temple grounds. Within the temple grounds, there are still plenty more stairs to climb, but they are lined with stone pillars instead of annoying shops. Actually, the stone pillars are engraved with names, apparently the names of people and organizations who have paid for the privilege. Each slab of stone is like a billboard--if all these other people have paid to erect slabs at this temple, maybe you should, too. Still, I kept walking up those stairs, making my way past my fellow shrine visitors.

Worshippers give props to the temple. The temple had some gilded propellers. This was the biggest one I saw.

It wasn't just stairs and crowds. There were breaks in them, plazas, places where you could enter treasure houses and little shrine buildings and buy soft drinks from vending machines. There were trees and views. Really, once I'd emerged from the area with all of the tourist traps, the rest of the walk was nice enough, certainly a fine way to spend a few hours in Shikoku.

As I climbed, I noticed that this complex had lots of those places where there's a water trough with dippers so that temple-goers can drink and wash their hands. I didn't know if there were so many of these because it was a sailor's shrine or because visitors got worn out from all the stairs.

I reached the main shrine and there were temple buildings and a milling of tourist crowds and tour guides yelling into megaphones and I decided to keep going on up even more stairs to the inner shrine.

And then there were no crowds. There were people, occasionally, a few at a time, nodding, saying "Konnichiwa," smile, continuing. There were stairs, also stone path, moving through the shadows of tall, swaying trees, sun keeping an eye out. I climbed and climbed. A Japanese lady, walking down, on her return journey, jabbered at me for a while. As near as I could tell, she was either saying it wasn't far to the inner shrine, or else it was far. She seemed to be saying some other things, besides. I looked on in smiling noncomprehension, said "Gambarimasu!" ("I persevere!"), and kept going. Past some temple buildings, up more stairs, past a smoking area, up more stairs, past trees and carved stone columns, until I reached the inner shrine. It seemed like any other temple building, so I didn't stay long, just turned around and walked back down.

Ah, what a pretty wooded mountainside.

Back at the main shrine area, there were still plenty of tourists. I made my way past them, and made my way to a covered area, a structure with roof but no walls, an area in which the temple displayed special offerings. Many of these were pictures--paintings and photos--of boats that the owners wanted blessed. I made an incomplete list. (Emphasis on the "incomplete"; there was much swag here.)

(Later, a web search on "Malt's Mermaid" turned up an explanation of its strange appearance.)

As I stood trying to take all this in, occasionally a nun would go running past, lending just the right amount of surreality. And then I'd seen enough of temples, and I went down the stairs and down more stairs and among the shops and down more stairs and then I took a side trip to a maritime museum.

The Maritime Museum

Exterior of the maritime museum showing off its strange paneling. There were also some displays of enginery and props.

When I entered the Maritime Museum, the ticket seller suggested that I take the elevator up to the fifth floor and walk down to the first, looking at each floor along the way. And that's what I did.

I forget what was on the 5th floor. I didn't take any notes. I think maybe the lights weren't on, so I might have stumbled around for a while before heading down to the 4th floor. I was the only visitor in this museum. I don't know if that's because all of these people visiting a sailor's temple had no interest in the sea. Or maybe they'd already visited the maritime musea of other cities. I imagined that the lights on this floor were supposed to be on, but that the problem had gone unnoticed for days.

The fourth floor was titled A Treasure Island of Stories. There were panels printed with text about legends of the sea. I started to get excited. Would this provide a survey course about Japanese maritime folklore?

The first panel was titled うみさちひとやまさちひと ("Umi Sachi Hito Yama Sachi Hito") There was a picture showing two human figures, one pointing to the sun, the other to the sky. I didn't know what it meant, but surely future researches would explain it. (They haven't.)

Next was Urashima 太郎 , with a picture of a boy on a flying turtle. The story of "Urashima Taro". (Go ahead and search for "Urashima Taro" and you'll find the story. It's nothing special, perhaps, but I was glad for a pointer to it.)

In the museum's parking lot held an impromptu exhibit of intermodal freight.

The next panel, 人魚伝説 , had a picture of a mermaid. It seemed to be talking about Westerners. The next panel was titled アトランチス . I sounded it out: A-to-ra-n-chi-su "Atlantis?" Okay, I was beginning to understand, some of these panels would have Western folklore instead of Eastern. Next was--Poseidon. Treasure Island, Peter Pan, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, the White Whale, Robinson Crusoe--so many Western stories.

There were models of sailing ships and informative panels about historical figures from the first meeting of Japan and Western ships. There was a simulator game I wasn't up to figuring out. On a TV screen, Ultraman maneuvered around on a space station. He seemed out of place.

The third floor was titled, "The Submarine Salon". There were various pieces of nauticana: a ship's wheel, lanterns. There was a movie showing some kind of undersea exploration (or undersea something) with little submarines--something was twice as deep as Fuji-san is tall--something about tectonic plates--I gave up on trying to follow the movie, but was still amazed at the similarity of documentary narrative regardless of language.

Though the fourth floor's title didn't promise any stores, nevertheless, there were panels about the triton, the kraken, a sea lion, a siren, and a Japanese sea monster 海ぼうず ("umi bo-zu"), a looming humanoid with spiky cactus arms. It was very scary-looking, and I was glad to learn of its existence while on dry land.

I made this sketch of the sketch of the Umibouzu that they had at the museum. It looked like it had a scaly, amored carapace and spiky tentacles. The way it was posed, I got the impression that it was really big, looming over ships. Not that they provided anything in their sketch to suggest scale.

There was a display of knots, which I didn't linger over, since I'd got that book about them to study later. There was a wooden box containing a (silver?) ax and hammer, each with an attached tassel. There were ship's models. There were books--reference books, comic books. There were perhaps 200 books, none of which I could read. I tried not to let that bother me. There were models of offshore platforms. There were photographs of some newish boats: hydrofoils, a LNG (liquid natural gas) tanker, a 1973 tanker with thingies that looked like sails (There was interpretive text, which I couldn't read, perhaps explaining the thingies.), a "Techno Super Liner", a PCC ship (whatever that is), Voyager (a boat that looked like a giant gray apple sitting on a catamaran, with some other gray apple attached somehow). There were models of engines, of a propeller. There was a little navigational equipment, and photos of more. There were signals, lights, an old acetalyne lamp, a horn controlled by a bellows. (If I understood the interpretive text correctly (doubtful), the bellows would sit in a boat from which a diver had been lowered. The diver would hold a rope attached to the bellows. The diver could signal people on the boat by pulling the rope, compressing the bellows, blowing the horn. That doesn't make much sense, though, so I think I misunderstood something.) There was rescue stuff--flotation vests, flare guns, signal flags, and transmitter-looking doo-dads.

And yet, I wasn't that impressed. Apparently, I'd seen too many Japanese maritime museums.

I couldn't tell what was happening on the second floor. "Kompira-san" appeared in the title, and it seemed to be a rotating exhibit. There were lots of photos of ships. There was a photo an old Eastern-looking sailing ship out of Okayama. There were lots of other photos of lots of other ships. I took notes, but nothing coherent. Aside from the photos, there wasn't much. There was a little display of different kinds of rope. There was a small display about GMDSS, whatever that is.

The first floor was meant to be reminiscent of the port at which people hopped off of boats and started on their pilgrimage to Kompira-san. There wasn't much to do there.

Departures: Land of the Rising Sun: Part A

Kotohira

The Maritime Museum

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