Dazaifu Shrine

I had a very interesting weekend recently. I went to the largest city in Kyushu, Fukuoka with several other teachers for a day of sightseeing. It is roughly 45 minutes west of my town and the city itself is a vibrant commercial centre with lots of shopping and nightlife as opposed to the more industrial Kitakyushu.

We arrived in Hakata station and from there made our way to the subway to reach a small area called Dazaifu. The big attraction in this area is a large shrine which is said to be about a thousand years old. The shrines are places where cremated remains of ancestors are laid, and they are often places of great beauty. Most often the shrines seem to be large, flat upright boulders with Kanji script chiselled into them ( presumably details of the ancestor ). In this sense they are quite like a gravestone I guess. Often they have their own temples nearby and are surrounded with trees and statues of animals.

The Japanese have a set of beliefs called Shinto which as far as I know is a form of ancestor worship. So these Shrines are very sacred and often visited places. This particular shrine Dazaifu was very beautiful indeed. There were many individual shrines and a temple in an area of roughly 500m. It was surrounded by trees and well manicured gardens and had a river running through it.

The architechture was characterised by huge stone archways and strikingly red Japanese buildings with long hanging ropes at the entrance that fray at the bottom. Anyone familiar with Asian temples will know what I mean. In the centre of this area was a large temple where a priest was chanting as a group of people sat inside praying. We could view this all from the outside and despite our curiosity decided not to go inside as we did not want to interrupt the service. Besides, me and Matt have tried to enter a temple once before and were basically shooed away by the priest. I guess its fair enough though.

Imagine Japanese tourists gazing in wonder at a European church service!! I think you have to try to respect what other people hold sacred without seeing it as a tourist attraction.

So despite the fact that my English friend took a photo of the scene, I refrained. It was a very interesting scene none the less and it struck me as not too dissimilar visually from European religious worship from an observers point of view. Anyway we had a great day and I took lots of other photos.

I learned later that Dazaifu shrine is one of the largest in Kyushu and one that is frequently visited.

One of the ancestors who it is dedicated to was a great patron of education and learning many centuries ago. As a result this shrine has become synonomous with education and educational success.

Local students go to Dazaifu to pray or give offerings to the ancestors and hope in return to recieve good marks!

The day we went the weather was abominable, heavy rain and wind but there were still a lot of young people and students in uniform looking for some extra help from above . Its little wonder though, the education system here is notoriously competitive and brutally exam based. The pressure to succeed at high school to go to a good University is immense for young people here and even though many go to supplementary exam cram classes every night, maybe they do need all the help they can get.