Osorezan

In the extreme northeast of Honshu, the Shimokita peninsula juts like an axe head into the Pacific. Not exactly at the heart of things, the peninsula is home to one of Japan’s most sacred, and unsettling, pilgrimage sites.
More than eleven centuries ago a monk named Ennin, studying Buddhism in China, had a dream that he should return to Japan, walk east for thirty days, and establish a temple at the mountain he found there. The mountain he found was an 879-meter volcano on the Shimokita peninsula. The volcano is called Osorezan, meaning Dread Mountain.

Ennin’s temple, called either Bodaiji or Entsuji, is considered by many traditional Japanese to be the place where the spirits of the dead enter or escape from hell. If this was Ennin’s intention in founding the temple, he couldn’t have chosen a more likely spot. Not actually on the volcano itself, Bodaiji occupies an eerie, blighted plain beneath the peak, close by the shore of the sallow, lifeless Lake Usoriyama, poisoned by sulphurous seepage from nearby volcanic cauldrons and springs.

There are always a few visitors here, but Bodaiji becomes overrun with guests during the Osorezan Taisai from July 20-24. During this festival, believers throng the temple precincts to seek the services of itako. The itako are spirit mediums, women blind from birth, who have undertaken a spiritual regimen culminating in marriage to a god that they claim confers the ability to speak with the dead. In modern Japan there are fewer and fewer itako, and most of them are older women. But here at Osorezan they still assist those who are desperate to send or receive messages from ancestors or the newly dead.

If you don’t feel the need to contact anyone, spend your time wandering the grounds. The atmosphere can be forbidding, but many travelers are deeply moved. Picking your way carefully past the volcanic cauldrons, seething and steaming in a variety of unreal colors, you’ll see thousands of mizuko jizo, statues of a very popular Buddhist figure who is responsible for helping deceased children, who may be frightened and confused, find there way from this world to the next. Dressed in their red bibs and caps, these statues can become unbearably pathetic if you’re susceptible to such things. Small piles of stones also punctuate the landscape, supposedly heaped there by the spirits while they await safe passage to the other side. Both the statues and stones are festooned with offerings for the dead; toys, whirring pinwheels, flowers and packets of sweets are strewn about the jizo. As you approach the beach of Usoriyama, you’ll spot the prettily arched red bridge crossing a poisonous little stream popularly equated with the River Sanzu, a mythic river occupying the same position as the River Styx.

One of the oddest things visitors will encounter at Osorezan is other people. Laughing families may be picnicking only meters away from solitary figures locked in the deepest grief. It’s not an obvious place for a tourist to visit, but those who make the journey often find that Osorezan lingers with them, stirring strong feelings long after memories of Tokyo have merged into a single chaotic image of crowds and neon. And for anyone with an interest in Buddhism or folk religion, it really is a remarkable place.

Matt Mangham

JR Shimokita station====(45 min. by bus)====Osorezan

JR Shimokita station====(25 min. by taxi)====Osorezan

Open Date:
May 1st - End of October

Open Hours:
6:00 - 18:00

Adult: 500 yen
Child (Elementay/Junior High student): 200 yen