Traveling along the Mino Road to Oku-Echizen ~SEP, 2026~

On my way back to my hometown (Kanazawa), I felt like driving on a road I'd never driven before, so I took the Mino Highway from Gujo Hachiman to Fukui and entered Ono. Along the highway, I could see the Chubu Trans-Japan Expressway under construction, which will connect to the Tokai-Hokuriku Expressway in the spring of 2029, linking Fukui and Nagoya in a nearly straight line. I had the impression that the Gujo Domain, with its territory dispersed between Mino and Echizen, must have been difficult to govern, but as I followed the road that crossed the Aburasaka Pass (780m above sea level) and entered the basin, I felt a sense of empathy for the hardships faced by the domain's officials. In the basin in early autumn after the typhoon had passed, white buckwheat flowers were blooming everywhere, along with the rice stalks that were yet to be harvested.

I came to Senpuku-ji Temple to see the large zelkova tree, and it seems that the temple, which began in 1468, was built using this zelkova tree as a landmark. It is said to be 800 years old, so it must have been a large tree that was already over 200 years old when the temple was built.

When it comes to tourist spots in Oku-Echizen, Eiheiji Temple and the Dinosaur Museum come to mind, but Ono and Katsuyama have many other historical sites. I had visited Eiheiji Temple before, so I skipped it this time and instead hiked up to Echizen Ono Castle, which has recently become popular as the "Castle in the Sky," and got a good workout for my legs.

Later, Kanamori Nagachika, who was granted the domain of Hida Takayama by Hideyoshi, was ordered by Nobunaga to go to Ono to take measures against the Ikko-ikki rebellion in Echizen, and built this castle. The building, which stands on a mountain about 260 meters high, is a reconstructed keep, but the stone walls that form its foundation are beautiful and make it an impregnable castle. It has been designated as one of the Another Top 100 Castles, along with the evaluation of the castle town's architecture.

After the Battle of Sekigahara, Yuki Hideyasu was granted the entire province of Echizen with a stipend of 680,000 koku. He finally made an appearance recently in "Toyotomi Brothers," a drama I reluctantly watch because of its bizarre, trite, and historically inaccurate script. The scene where he was offered as an adopted son to Hideyoshi after the Battle of Komaki-Nagakute shows him becoming the successor to the Yuki clan when Ieyasu was transferred to the Kanto region, and he grew up to become an important right-hand man to his real father. He died at the young age of 33, seven years after becoming the lord of Echizen, but his successor (Tadanao) angered Hidetada, resulting in his dismissal and reduction of territory, and Echizen was divided.

Ono County, which occupied Oku-Echizen, became a branch domain of the Katsuyama Domain and the Ono Domain, with Hideyasu's children serving as lords. Later, during the Genroku period, the Ogasawara and Doi families, who were hereditary daimyo, were established there, and it remained so until the end of the Edo period. Adding the Gujo Domain mentioned above, it is clear that the area was mainly divided among three domains.

Ono is the place where Asakura Yoshikage met his end. Yoshikage was about to commit suicide at Ichijōdani when he was stopped, and his cousin Kageakira temporarily protected Yoshikage and his family at Kenshōji Temple in Ono, which was his territory. However, Kageakira eventually surrounded the temple and forced Yoshikage to commit suicide, and after capturing his mother (Kōtokuin) and wife and children, he surrendered to Nobunaga along with Yoshikage's head.

Kenshoji Temple no longer exists, and it is believed that the current Sogenji Temple is located on its former site. The five-tiered pagoda, built in 1790 by a former retainer of the Asakura family, was later moved to a nearby location and now stands in Yoshikage Park alongside the graves of his wife and children.

Although Kageakira, who had betrayed his allies, was granted control of the Ono territory, he soon became an enemy of the Echizen Ikko-ikki forces and was killed in battle while holed up in Heisenji Hakusan Shrine. Hakusan worship has existed since ancient times, but for people from Kaga (Kanazawa), Shirayama Hime Shrine is the most authoritative shrine and the head shrine. On the other hand, Heisenji Hakusan Shrine is the shrine on the Echizen side that inherited the Hakusan worship. Both were founded by Zen Master Taicho in the early Nara period, but Heisenji Hakusan Shrine prospered as a temple and shrine where Shinto and Buddhism were combined until the Meiji Restoration, and since the Meiji era, it has remained a shrine while retaining the name Heisenji. Neither is necessarily superior, but the Edo shogunate recognized that the rituals at the inner shrine on the summit of Mount Hakusan should be performed by Heisenji Hakusan Shrine, and then in the Meiji era, the right to perform the rituals was transferred to Hakusan Hime Shrine. So, it's possible that this kind of dispute over who the "original" shrine is has existed since ancient times.

I looked into the differences, and it turns out that the main deities enshrined on the Echizen side are Izanami, Amaterasu, and Okuninushi-no-Mikoto, while on the Kaga side, Izanami is common to both, but the other deities are Izanagi and Kukuri-hime. Kukuri-hime is a goddess who makes a brief appearance in the Nihon Shoki, and she is a goddess who played a part in settling a dispute between Izanagi and Izanami in the underworld, and is also a goddess of matchmaking. Why she became associated with the Hakusan faith and why she is not enshrined on the pillars of the Heisenji Hakusan Shrine remains a mystery.

Heisenji Temple flourished during the medieval period from the 14th to the 16th centuries, becoming a massive religious city with 90,000 koku of temple land, 8,000 warrior monks, and 6,000 monasteries. It was practically a daimyo (feudal lord) in its own right, but as mentioned above, the entire temple complex was burned down in a conflict with the Echizen Ikko-ikki rebellion in 1574. Recent archaeological excavations have uncovered a vast amount of stone pavement and the remains of monasteries, with 60% of the 6,000 monasteries found at the Minamitani site in particular. I walked on many of the old stone pavements, but there are still large areas that remain unexcavated.

The temple grounds are vast and covered in moss, which is magnificent. In "Kaido wo Yuku", Ryotaro Shiba wrote that compared to this, the moss at Kyoto's Koke-dera (Saiho-ji Temple) was laughable. Well, I can agree, but as I pay an annual membership fee to Koke-dera, I have mixed feelings.

Shinoza Shrine, located in a residential area, was also founded by Zen Master Taichō, and its main deity is Ōkuninushi-no-Mikoto. Taichō was born in Echizen and enjoyed the deep trust of successive emperors from the founding of the Nara period. He was a high-ranking monk who contributed to the recovery of emperors from illness and the containment of smallpox, which was prevalent during the Tenpyō period. Around the time of the Nara period, other monks who focused on spreading Buddhism in specific regions include Gyōki in the Kinai region, Tokuichi in Aizu, and Dōchū, Kōchi, and Ennin from Kōzuke and Shimotsuke to Ōu. The process by which Buddhism expanded from being aimed at protecting the nation to becoming popular, and the subsequent major wave of Kamakura Buddhism that spread, are important keys to understanding the spiritual history that ran parallel to Japan's political history, and it is a particularly interesting topic as many traces of it still remain in rural areas.

Katsuyama boasts Seidaiji Temple, which houses a bronze Buddha statue (17m tall) larger than the Great Buddha of Nara (15m), and the tallest five-story pagoda in Japan, creating an imposing presence. It was built forty years ago with a donation from Kiyoshi Tada, who made his fortune in the taxi business in Osaka. He apparently didn't initially make it a religious corporation with the intention of paying taxes to Katsuyama City, but contrary to his expectations, the number of visitors stagnated. Later, it became unable to pay taxes, and Katsuyama City took over its management. Recently, however, the city's PR efforts seem to have finally paid off, and the number of visitors, mainly inbound tourists, is increasing. Mr. Tada was a philanthropist who also donated the Tajima Great Buddha, and I imagine that this project was done with the best interests of his hometown in mind, but it may not have resonated with the Japanese spirit of wabi-sabi. Since 2002, it has belonged to the Myoshinji branch of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism.

In a separate article (The House Outside the System), I outlined how the descendants of Ieyasu's second son, Yuki Hideyasu, prospered until the end of the Edo period. The lineage of Hideyasu's eldest son, Tadanao, who was dispossessed of his domain, moved to the Takada domain, and after further troubles, continued to exist as the Mimasaka Tsuyama domain until the end of the Edo period. The Fukui domain was succeeded by Tadanao's younger brother, Tadamasa, but the Edo shogunate basically had a policy of abolishing families without heirs, so in the early Edo period, many branch domains were created as spares for each daimyo family, and Tadamasa also granted the Matsuoka domain of 50,000 koku at the foot of Eiheiji Temple to his eldest illegitimate son, Masakatsu, establishing the domain. As expected, Masakatsu's three children became the lords of the main Fukui domain, which had no heirs, and the Matsuoka domain ended its mission after 76 years and two generations and was abolished.

It was in 1689, during the reign of Masakatsu, that Basho visited Tenryu-ji Temple, which Masakatsu had built as his family temple, as part of his journey chronicled in "Oku no Hosomichi" (The Narrow Road to the Deep North). Basho traveled north to Kisakata in Dewa Province on the 16th of the 6th month of the lunar calendar and arrived at Tenryu-ji Temple on the 10th of the 8th month, indicating that he walked the 600km journey along the Sea of Japan for nearly two months. He then visited Eihei-ji Temple, walked to Ogaki to end his journey, and returned to his hometown of Iga-Ueno. Basho's visit sparked a boom in haiku poetry in the area, and the people of Matsuoka erected a Basho mound here on the 150th anniversary of his death.

It seems that despite walking all the way from Kanazawa to Fukui, they didn't visit Tojinbo. Whether they didn't feel like taking a detour, or whether it wasn't particularly famous as a scenic spot at the time, is unclear. There is a site of Tojinbo within the grounds of Heisenji Hakusan Shrine, and its history is explained: in the late Heian period, a violent monk named Tojinbo incurred the wrath of other monks and was pushed off the cliff. Traveling allows you to accumulate a lot of trivia that isn't particularly useful in life. Oku-Echizen was also part of the Mito Tengu Party's marching route, so let's visit it again on a different topic next time.