Kawaguchi Asama Shrine Audio Guide

Kawaguchi Asama Shrine: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Kawaguchi Asama Shrine

   Welcome to Kawaguchi Asama Shrine, known in Japanese as Kawaguchi Asama Jinja, in the town of Fujikawaguchiko in Yamanashi Prefecture, on the northern side of Mount Fuji. Here, among towering trees, you are standing in a place that began as a response to a volcano. The story starts in the year 864, when Mount Fuji erupted on a huge scale. In the following year, 865, a shrine was founded here by imperial command, with one purpose: to calm the mountain. Today the shrine is registered as part of the World Heritage property called Fujisan, Sacred Place and Source of Artistic Inspiration. Over the next few minutes we will look at the eruption behind the shrine's founding, the main hall and the unusual shape of its worship hall, the great cedars that surround you, and the festival that brings a goddess to visit her grandchild. Take your time, because this is a place that rewards slow walking.

2. 02

   Kawaguchi Asama Shrine and the Great Eruption

   Let us go back to 864. That year began the great Jogan eruption of Mount Fuji. Court records describe the damage, including lava that filled parts of the water on the mountain's flank and buried two lakes that were then known as the Motosu Sea and the Se no Umi. The disaster was understood as a failure to honor the mountain's deity properly, and the court decided that the god Asama should be worshipped in Kai Province too. The following year, 865, a shrine to Asama Myojin was raised in Kai and was ranked among the official shrines of the state. That is the origin of Kawaguchi Asama Shrine. It is traditionally regarded as the first Asama shrine built on the northern foothills of Mount Fuji. The setting is part of the story. You are told that the site faces Mount Fuji with Lake Kawaguchi lying between them, a position said to be one reason this place was chosen, so that the shrine could be protected if the mountain erupted again. Asama is known as a volcano goddess, and in the early nineteenth century the shrine came to enshrine Konohanasakuyahime, the goddess of flowers, as well.

3. 03

   Kawaguchi Asama Shrine: Halls, Horses and Ancient Stone

   Now look at the buildings. The present main hall dates from 1607. A fire destroyed the earlier hall in 1606, and the local lord, Torii Naritsugu, rebuilt it the next year. It is a one-bay hall in the flowing-roof style known as nagare-zukuri, with a porch crowned by a curved gable. It was taken apart and repaired in 1965 and is designated a tangible cultural property of the town of Fujikawaguchiko. The worship hall has an unusual layout. It is a split-hall type in which two main halls sit under one roof, divided by an open earthen-floor space. That central space is used for a traditional children's dance. In front of the worship hall stands a small stone shrine called the Biretsu stone, or Hiira stone. Tradition holds that it is the stone enclosure where the god Asama was first worshipped in ancient times. The shrine also holds a vivid painted votive plaque from 1697, showing a black horse in lacquer on a gold ground. It was painted by Kano Kuninobu and is based on the legend of the black horses of Kai. Legend also says that the hero Yamato Takeru rested his horse here on his eastern campaign, and a pair of carved horses from a former horse shrine at the entrance still survives.

4. 04

   Kawaguchi Asama Shrine: Cedars, Falls and a Goddess's Visit

   Look up. The seven great cedars here are a natural monument of the town, and they are said to be more than 1,200 years old, which would make them older than the shrine itself. There are well over a hundred big trees in the precinct altogether, and they give the whole place its hushed, solemn feel. The shrine's story spreads beyond its gates. Kawaguchi became a village of pilgrim guides, called oshi, who hosted Mount Fuji climbers from the late medieval period through the Edo period, when climbing the mountain became popular. Pilgrims who stayed here performed purification at a waterfall called Haha no Shirataki, the Mother's White Falls, which sits on shrine land on the way toward Mitsutoge. A small shrine stands beside it. Another subordinate shrine, Ubuyagasaki, honors Ugayafukiaezu, the grandchild of the flower goddess. Every year on April 25, the Magomi Festival, the Day of Seeing the Grandchild, brings these two together. Konohanasakuyahime is carried in a portable shrine to visit her grandchild, and the children's dance, which is a prefectural intangible cultural asset, is offered at the shrine.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you leave Kawaguchi Asama Shrine, notice how the whole place is arranged around a conversation with a mountain. A volcano erupted, an emperor's court responded, and more than a thousand years later people still gather under these cedars each spring to honor a goddess and her grandchild. Before you go, take one more look at the old trees along the approach and think about how long they have been standing here. See if you can spot the stone shrine in front of the worship hall, and the way the roofs of the split worship hall sit together. Then let your curiosity carry you onward. The mountain that shaped this shrine is still there, and the pilgrim village, the waterfall and the lake around you each have their own part of the story to tell.