屋島寺 Yashimaji · Temple 84 · Mount Yashima, Takamatsu, Kagawa
The battle
In 1185 the Genpei war came here. The Taira had their camp on this coast; the Minamoto came around behind them and drove them into the sea.
The moment everyone in Japan knows happened just offshore: a fan set up on a boat as a target, rocking on the waves, and a young archer named Nasu no Yoichi sent out to hit it from horseback in the water. He hit it.
The place names on this mountain still carry the battle. So, people will tell you, do other things — there are stretches of this plateau where nobody much likes to be after dark.
Tasaburō
The temple's other resident is a tanuki.
Beside the main hall stands the shrine of 蓑山大明神 Minoyama Daimyōjin, where Tasaburō of Yashima is enshrined — one of the three great tanuki of Japan, alongside Danzaburō of Sado and Shibaemon of Awaji.
Tanuki in Japan are not pests and not quite tricksters. They are shapeshifters, and the good ones protect. Tasaburō is said to have guided Kūkai through the fog on this mountain when he could not find the way, and he is petitioned for marriage, for harmony in a family, and for safe childbirth.
He is also, by reputation, an unmatched illusionist — said to have re-staged the entire Genpei battle in the air above the plateau for anyone able to see it.
If your sense of tanuki comes from anime, this is where to meet the original: not comic relief, but a being with a shrine, a lineage and petitioners.
Going there
Reachable by road, or by the old stone pilgrim path up the side of the mountain — and the path is worth the climb. From the plateau you look out over the Inland Sea in both directions, with Gokenzan and Yakuriji directly opposite.
Yashima is a short walk from where I live, and it is usually the first place I take people on our journeys — the whole Inland Sea opens up from the top of it.
The May 2027 journeys →