Last week I went on a research trip to Hamamatsu (浜松) in Shizuoka Prefecture, to do research for the next Shinto in Person essay. My main purpose was to visit Akihasan Hongū Akiha Jinja (秋葉山本宮秋葉神社).
I did, but I am having second thoughts about whether I can include it in the book. “Akihasan” is Mt Akiha, which is 866 metres high, and the Upper Sanctuary is on top of it. To get there, if you don’t have a car, you have to get a train from Hamamatsu (30 minutes), then a bus (45 minutes) that takes you to the Lower Sanctuary. The bus only runs about four times a day.
From the Lower Sanctuary, you have to climb a mountain path, which is the Omotesandō (表参道), or “Front Sacred Path”, that is 4.5 km long and rises about 700 m. And if you want to get the bus back, you really need to be on the train leaving Hamamatsu at 7:30 am, and do the whole round trip, up and down the mountain, in four hours.
It can be done. I did it. The path can be walked along its whole length — there is no actual “mountaineering” involved. But I walk about 4.5 km every day, and this path took me twice as long as my daily walk, because it is steep. In some parts, it has steps. Going down, those are easier than the slopes.
Even if you had a car, you would have to navigate up the mountain road that takes you to the Upper Sanctuary. In winter, there are buses from the railway station to the Upper Sanctuary, apparently, but I imagine it gets quite chilly up there at that time of year.
If you look at the website, you can see that it is quite a spectacular site, but I am not sure that it is really accessible enough for the “in person” part.
Akiha Jinja was originally part of Shinto-Buddhist practice, something that is suggested by its location. The accepted theory is that visiting sacred sites on the top of mountains appears to have originated with Buddhism, although it acquired Shinto elements early on. (The theory is that kami lived on mountains in early Shinto, and so people did not climb and violate the sacred areas. I am not sure how strong the evidence for this is, however.) Some of the Buddhist elements remain. If you follow the path up the mountain, you pass a Buddhist temple honouring Akiha Gongen, the Buddhist figure. That did not seem to get many visitors, possibly because it is quite a walk from the car park at the top.
There were Edo-period stone lanterns along the route, and ruins of a couple of rest stops, which suggest that a lot more people used to climb the main path than do today. It seems that it was a real pilgrimage route in the Edo period, and I did feel more like a pilgrim than I do when visiting most jinja. However, far fewer people appear to climb the path now. I saw about half a dozen people in each direction, which suggests that, at least on weekdays, people climb it at about fifteen-minute intervals. (It was a weekday, but it was also really good weather for it — no rain, mostly cloudy, gentle wind, and a temperature in the high teens centigrade.) I saw rather more people at the Upper Sanctuary, but the orientation of the buildings there shows that the vast majority come from the car park.
If you have mobility problems, or, indeed, just normal mobility for a modern urban dweller (and no car in Japan), the Upper Sanctuary is not accessible. On the other hand, if you are a strong walker but don’t like crowds, you’d love it…