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Dewa-sanzan

Dewa-sanzan, sometimes shortened to Dewasan, is a collective term for three peaks in Yamagata Prefecture that have been regarded as sacred since at least the sixth century.
The three peaks, Haguro-san, Gas-san, and Yudono-san are also famously one of the principal haunts of the Yamabushi (meaning “those who lie down in the mountains), the ascetic mountain priests of a uniquely Japanese religious sect called Shugendo.

Today Shugendo is still practiced, but it was outlawed from the Meiji era to the post-war period and the shrines here are strictly Shinto, at least officially. Each peak has its own shrine, and traditionally the tour of Dewa-sanzan begins with Haguro-san, the lowest of the three at just 414 meters. Though many visitors opt to stay in nearby Tsuruoka, it might be more interesting to find accommodations in one of the thirty or so shukubo, or temple lodgings, scattered through the Toge district of Haguro-machi at the base of the peak. Several of these (look for the heavy thatched roofs) are run by Yamabushi.

Your ascent begins once you’ve passed a small torii gate marking the entrance to the mountain’s sacred ground. You’ll pass through a beautiful stands of cedar, including one that is said to be 1,400 years old, and a wooden pagoda that has stood here for a thousand years, though it was rebuilt 600 years ago. Then comes the stone stairway. It only seems endless; actually, there are 2,446 steps and it’s said that 33 lotus leaves, sake cups and gourds are carved into them. Find them all and you’ll enjoy good fortune, though it’s notoriously difficult to do.

The top of Haguro-san, by far the most visited of the three sacred peaks, visitors will find the shrine, consecrated to the deities of all the peaks. The main building is the Gosaiden, with two-meter thick thatch on the roof and lacquer inside and out. In front of the Gosaiden is the Kagami-ike, or mirror pond. The pond takes its name not just from its own reflection of the shrine, but because in times past those who couldn’t visit the shrine (mostly women) would give a mirror to someone making the pilgrimage, and the mirror would be thrown into the pond. At some point the mirrors were removed and many of the best were restored and put on display.

Unlike the other two peaks, Haguro-san is open year-round, though you’d have to be pretty foolhardy to try the climb in winter, when the stone stairs are covered in snow.
Gassan, at 1,984 meters, is open only during the summer, and while the shrine is the least interesting of the three, the view from Gassan is by far the best. To reach the shrine you’ll pass through the Mida-ga-hara, variously called either a meadow or a swamp in English. For those who are interested, the Mida-ga-hara is home to wild mountain lilies and other alpine flowers.

The last of the three peaks is Yudono-san, though the shrine is located more than a kilometer north of the peak itself. This is the most secretive and inaccessible of the three shrines, and is open from spring to autumn. The traditional route leads you down steep rock faces, some traversed by rickety steel ladders tens of meters long, then sends you splashing through a mountain stream before you arrive at the gates of the shrine. Here you are ritually purified and told the rules, which include a strict prohibition on photography and a ban on telling others what you have seen or experienced within the shrine. You’ll find various accounts of the shrine’s inner precincts in guidebooks and websites, but not here. Go see for yourself.

■Yamabushi

Yamabushi translates as ‘those who lie down in the mountains,’ and refers to followers of Shugendo, a uniquely Japanese religious movement blending elements of Shinto, Buddhism, Taoism and folk faith. Its origins are, not surprisingly, obscure. Nothing of historical certainty can be said about Shugendo’s legendary founder, the monk En-no-gyoja.
Mountains have always been a focus of religious awe. Standing in plain view, often dominating the human landscape, the mountain heights were nevertheless a world apart, remote, uninhabitable, dangerous, and terribly beautiful. No wonder that every culture has populated its mountaintops with gods and monsters. Japan was no different, and the men (almost all of them were men) who sought out those beings to learn and gain favor from them, were the Yamabushi. The opposite is true, as well. In many portrayals of tengu, minor but powerful deities of the mountains, they are depicted wearing the characteristic garb of a Yamabushi.
There are still Yamabushi today, practicing their rituals and ascetic training practices at several key centers around Japan, but Shugendo in the 21st century is only the faintest shadow of its former self, as relevant to most modern Japanese as the trickle of staff-bearing pilgrims wandering the old pilgrimage routes of Austria and Spain are to modern Europeans.

Many people, Japanese included, assume that Shugendo was always a peripheral religious phenomenon, an unsophisticated cult that flourished in out of the way places, unnoticed by the religious establishment in the city centers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For most of the Heian era and into the Kamakura period, Shugendo was mainstream religion, patronized by the uppermost strata of Japanese society and powerful enough to influence the outcome of struggles such as the Gempei wars of the 12th century. A number of scholars have made convincing arguments for Shugendo’s great contributions to Japanese arts, particularly the performing arts.

It was later, when other religious experiments (think Zen) began to attract the lion’s share of religious innovation in Japan, that Shugendo became a more marginalized, slightly more subdued practice. But right into the nineteenth century it remained a powerful force in many parts of the country.

That changed with the near-mortal blow dealt to Shugendo by the advent of the Meiji Restoration. Under the new regime, Shinto was reconfigured as a state-run Emperor cult, not to be commingled with Buddhism or anything else. Additionally, Shugendo was regarded as being backwards, superstitious and frankly an embarrassment for a country anxious to modernize overnight. Shugendo was outlawed, and its temples were seized and converted to shrines of the new State Shinto. It wasn’t until after the Second World War that a handful of adherents tried to revive the faith. For the most part, though, what Yamabushi remain operate within established schools of esoteric Buddhism. The famous Yamabushi of Dewa-sanzan, for instance, belong to the Tendai sect.

The Yamabushi initiation rite, a nine-day affair that was strictly secret for centuries, was recently filmed. The rituals had been practiced clandestinely during the Meiji prohibition only with great difficulty and risk. The head of the Dewa-sanzan sect decided it was best to make a record of the ritual in its entirety, in case Shugendo faced another, similar disaster.

If you’re intrigued, you can join a three-day “Yamabushi Experience” offered by the Ideha Culture Center in Haguro-machi. For less than 30,000 yen, Yamabushi will wake you up at 4:30, march you through the mountains on an empty stomach to meditate beneath a waterfall, and shut you into a small room filled with acrid, suffocating smoke, among other attractions. It’s surprisingly popular, and would certainly make an interesting alternative to more standard Japanese tours.

>>Access
Shonai Airport====(45 min. by car or bus)====Haguro
JR Tsuruoka station====(30 min. by bus )====Haguro Center
JR Tsuruoka station====(15 min. by car)====Haguro

-Matt Mangham

>> Tours in Yamagata