Narrow Road To The Deep North 5

We passed a large carved wooden dragon on our way down the hill. A kilometer north along the Daiyo River, we crossed the bridge, to another dragon, embossed on a chrysanthemum bronze vessel. Water flowed from its mouth, reminding us of Benten. Japanese deities associated with rainfall and bodies of water were depicted as huge, wingless, serpentine creatures with clawed feet. We headed north, to the most iconic bridge in the country. Rose and pink and carnelian in the rising sun, Arching over swirling white water cataracts in a deep chasm, were the shiny brass sleeves and patina budded baluster onion dome tops and studded side straps of the sacred Shinkyo Bridge. Built in 1636, only shoguns and their Imperial court emissaries were allowed to cross for more than three centuries, finally opened to the general public in 1973. As with most revered structures in Japan the Shinkyo came with its own legend. In 766, a thirty-two year-old priest named Shōdō Shonin declared the mountainous area around Nikkō as the pure land of Kannon and, with his disciples, set out to climb Mount Nantai, to pray for national prosperity. However, they could not cross the fast flowing Daiya River. Shōdō prayed and a ten-foot tall god named Jinja-Daiou appeared, with two big snakes twisted around his right arm, one red and one blue. When Jinja-Daiou released them, they transformed themselves into a rainbow bridge, which Shōdō and his followers used to cross the river. On the other side, they built a small retreat and, after a mysterious purple cloud rose in the east sky, the Shihonryuji ‘Purple-cloud-dragon’ Temple, the first structure built, and the birth of mountain worship, in Nikkō. Shōdō and his followers faced many more hardships in the next fifteen years, but they finally arrived at the top of Mount Nantai in 782. In the following centuries, Nikkō became one of Japan's greatest mountain Buddhist retreats, with 500 subtemples spread through the area.
On the sacred hill across the sacred Shinkyo, the first thing Robyn and I came to, up a long slope into a cedar forest was, not inappropriately, a copper statue of Priest Shōdō. He looked like a hybrid of Mussolini and Topo Gigio. He held the same ritual six-ringed shakujō walking staff as our Jizōs, the sound of which is designed to fend off poisonous serpents or harmful insects, warn small creatures not to inadvertently fall underfoot, attract alms, and the structure of which is designed as a formidable weapon in the hands of a practiced monk. The thirty tons of bluish black rocks of the foundation, brought from the nearby Kanmangafuchi abyss, shine when wet.
We came to the Ronnoji Temple, or at least the lifesize painted aerodrome exterior façade version of the Ronnoji Temple covering its renovations. The same year that Priest Shōdō’s snakes formed the sacred Shinkyo Bridge, he created the home base for three 30 foot-high gold-plated ‘gods of Nikkō,’ wooden images of Buddha, enshrined in Ronnoji’s Sanbutsudo Hall, whose pilgrims still pray for world peace.
But, because it was closed, Robyn and I moved across the path to Shōyō-en garden, also founded by Priest Shōdō, to alleviate the Imperial family successor's homesickness. Designed to resemble Lake Biwa and the surrounding scenery he had left behind, Shōyō-en was built in the Chisen Kaiyu Shiki style of a ‘short excursion around the pond.’ We strolled its curves slowly, feeling a different vista with every turn of the path, and how each component made it seem much larger than it was. There was a central carp pond surrounded and adorned by rhododendrons and moss and topiary and trees and rock paths and stone lanterns and bamboo fences, a pagoda and a small teahouse. And magnificent small stone bridges, light projecting through side-rail moon-shaped fenestrations, onto flagstones. A kerchief’d girl in gumboots with a hose directed us to the small treasure house, and relics of another age.