Page 37 - Seniorstoday August-2023 Issue

“thunderstorm of fire rain.” Here there is
Mount Koyasan
Just two hours from the neon-bright bustle
of contemporary Japan lies Koyasan, the
birthplace of Shingon Buddhism and a
place of such mysterious, otherworldly
power that it feels like visiting a spirit land.
We step out of our train at
Gokurakubashi, ‘The Bridge of Heaven’
and get into a clanky cable car that slowly
climbs up a thickly forested slope of pines
and step out on a silent country road, that
meanders into a settlement consisting of 117
temples, with slate grey roofs. This is the
single most powerful spot, the holiest place
in Japan - Koyasan, with fifty thousand
cultural and historical treasures nestling
among the tall cedars and cypress trees.
Mount Koya is a testament to everything
old and changeless and hushed. There
are no convenience stores or pachinko
parlours, no karaoke joints around the
sacred slopes. For over a thousand years,
women were not permitted to ascend the
holy mountain. When the mother of the
mountain’s discoverer, and the founder
of Shingon Buddhism Kobo Daishi, tried
to climb the slopes, she was repelled by a
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #50 | AUGUST 2023
nothing but trees, the outlines of temples,
and some walking trails. There is the
Ichi-no-hashi Bridge, where monks and
pilgrims traditionally wash their hands
and faces before entering what they believe
to be the “pure land,” or paradise, of
Shingon Buddhism.
Across that bridge is a dense grove of giant
cedar trees, many of them eight hundred
years old, surrounded by more than
200,000 graves. And at the very end of the
path lies the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi,
the “mother of Japanese culture,” and his
story “is one that still shivers on the edge
of folktale or creation myth.” You come
to Koyasan to experience an otherworldly
spirituality and to see Okunoin, the passage
through the graveyard, the largest in Japan
and the site of the mausoleum of Kobo
Daishi. The space is filled with thousands
of Jizo statues, moss-covered torii gates,
and memorials that have been constructed
for royalty and monks alike. Daimyo and
samurai, kabuki actor and soldier, are all
buried here: On one side is the grave of the
legendary fighter Toyotomi Hideyoshi on
another is the monument where his famous
predecessor Oda Nobunaga.
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