Batou Kannon – The Big Statue from the Blue Valey
This is a continuation of my previous entry abut the “yellow sakura” and it shows/describes some of our further discoveries in Aotanicho (青谷町) the Blue Valley district of Nada ward.
I will start with the statue of Batou Kannon (馬頭観音) – the Horse Head Kannon (also known as Hayagriva).
Yes, indeed – there was a 6 meter tall statue of a Buddhist deity just 20 minutes walk from our place and we didn’t even suspect it.
What does Kannon mean?
Kannon is most often translated in English as the God or Goddess Of of Mercy & Compassion in Buddhist mythology but this is a little bit misleading. Kannon is one of the bodhisattva – an entities which have achieved enlightenment but decided to stay in the world of constant life and death to help the rest of us to reach enlightenment (the Buddhas – and there are 28 of them – are also enlighten but they are completely outside of our world (they didn’t take the responsibility to help us)). As a matter of fact anyone of us can become a bodhisattva or even Buddha if he or she achieves enlightenment (and as a result automatically acquire status equal to this of a Kannon). That is what I meant when I said that simply stating that Kannon is a God/Goddess is a little bit misleading.
Kannon may take many different forms. Sometimes some of this forms can take different forms on their own. To make it even more complicated some of the Buddhas can manifest themselves as a Kannon too.
Who exactly is Batou Kannon?
Batou Kanon is one of the six Kannons responsible for saving all the sentient beings in the six realms (gods, semi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, hell). He is in charge of the 4th realm – the animals (by the way all the animals are nothing else but our reincarnations). Also he is always represented in its angry form and red skin.
It is said the angriness represents his (and sometimes her) determination to help us save our souls.
I spent quite some time in the Japanese language blogosphere to try to find some additional information about this statue and the temple complex in which it is situated (I used Google translate extensively for this purpose). What I could figure up (or rather conjure) is that the statue was build most probably around 1930 – 1933. It is related (together with some of the temples) with horses and even horse riding was mentioned in some of the blogs . You can see that Batou Kannon is standing on a lotus which is situated on the top of a horse. Also in the the complex one of the temples had two small horse statues in front of it (you can see one of them on the picture below – you may wish to click on the picture to enlarge).
Also it seems that if the pets of the people are sick they will visit the temple to pray to Batou Kannon for help. As a matter of fact we noticed many well fed cats around the temple complex. I think they are most probably something like temple animals (if I got it correctly something similar was mentioned and in one of the blogs).
Here is one of the most comprehensive blogs in Japanese I found dealing with the subject - http://blog.bonmee.com/. If your reading Japanese skills are good you can go and verify on your own what I got right and what I got wrong.
The complex itself was composed of 4 or 5 different temples – mainly Buddhist one but there were and some Shinto elements like this three small torii just next to the entrance:
Here is a selection from the rest of the photos from the complex:
For an end of this post I would like to show a short movie from the area (the place where Saigo river leaves the mountain and enters the city):
Actually a nice mountain path starts from this place. I hope one day I will have an opportunity to explore it – (moreover I have learned that it leads to a small tea plantation!).
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thanks for the post on the Rokko hachimangu . I am very interested in Taira no Kiyomori and (among other things) want to retrace his activities and hangouts in Kobe prior to his death in 1181. I am a gaijin and live rokko michi area. Love tripping around and up into the hills to find cool stuff. Send me an e-mail if you want to go explore more jinya and such. wallybarker@gmail.com