Ep. 095: The Temple among the Rocks

Home of the Sweating Saint

Another temple, another mountain. Iwama-dera (also called Shoho-ji, meaning "Correct Dharma Temple") is located at an altitude of 1280 feet, which accounts for the misty atmosphere on the January day in 2001 when I visited. Come and see in this episode of--

TEMPLE TALES!

Iwama-dera, meaning "The Temple Among the Rocks," is situated above Otsu City of Shiga Prefecture, but just across the border from the Kyoto suburb of Uji. It's in the same mountainous region as #10, Mimuroto-ji (see Episode 091) and #11, Kami Daigo-ji (see Episode 093), though there's no direct route between any of them. It's a comparatively short climb from the parking lot to the temple.

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"History"

In this age of jet planes, GPS, and a web of ground transportation, it seems that much of the mystery has gone out of the world. But imagine life thirteen centuries ago, when, in a "wild" place such as Japan was then, the very mountains held mystery and, for some, terror. Mountains, the people believed, were the places where their ancestors' spirits went after death. They were nearer the sun, the sources of rivers, homes to wild beasts, and the apparent generators of thunderstorms. No wonder only the bravest would venture forth to tap into their spiritual power.

Hakusan (Wikimedia)

And so a person could stake his claim to fame by simply climbing mountains, and dwelling in them. One such was a monk of shugendo (mountain asceticism) named Taicho (682-767). Almost every reference to this hardy soul mentions the greatest of his many mountaineering feats: he was the "opener of Hakusan," the first to climb this dormant volcano on the borders of Gifu and Ishikawa Prefectures, which stands 6,224 feet above its base. Hakusan today is considered one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains" (Sanreizan) along with Tateyama and the much-more famous Mount Fuji.