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is a 1.8 km street in Kamakura, a city in Kanagawa Prefecture
in Japan, unusual because it is at the same time the city's main avenue and the approach ( ) of its largest Shinto shrine, Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū
. Over the centuries Wakamiya Ōji has gone thorough an extreme change. A heavily trafficked road today, it used to be, to the contrary, off limits to most people as a sacred space. At the time of the Kamakura shogunate it was an essential part of the city's religious life, and as such it hosted many ceremonies and was rich with symbolism. Since its construction Wakamiya Ōji has been the backbone of the city's street planning and the center of its cultural life. The street has been declared a Historical Landmark and was chosen as one of the best 100 streets in Japan.
History

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most of Kamakura's famous things, Wakamiya Ōji was built at the
time of the
Kamakura shogunate.
Its builder, first Kamakura
shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo, wanted to imitate
Kyoto's . The name Wakamiya Ōji means "Young
Prince Avenue" and derives from its having been built in 1182 as a
prayer for the safe delivery of Yoritomo's first son, future shogun
Yoriie. That name appears also in
the
Azuma Kagami, but from historical
records it seems likely that the avenue at the time was more often
called .
In fact, all other Kamakura streets called
Ōji by the Azuma Kagami, for example Ōmachi
Ōji
and Komachi Ōji, are also called Kōji in other
medieval texts. During the
Muromachi period Wakamiya Ōji was called
with a number of different names by different sources, including ,
for example in Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's official records, in the ,
and or in a poetry collection called . The word Nanadō ("seven
times") refers to the number of times the shogun's representative
for the Kantō region (the "
Kantō
kubō") would walk around the Shinto gate called
"Hama no
Torii" (see below) in a ceremony part of a whole week of
religious celebrations. Analogously, the term Sendō ("a thousand
times") refers to the custom of praying a thousand times while on
this sacred avenue.
Recent excavations have revealed that Wakamiya Ōji was originally
33 m wide (much more than now), was flanked by pine trees (now
present only next to
Ichi no
Torii, see below), and on its sides run a 1.5 m
ditch. Next to its upper course, on the two sides there were empty
spaces where the remains of a market have been found. Being a
shrine's approach, the avenue passes under three
torii, or
Shinto gates,
called respectively
Ichi no Torii (first gate),
Ni no
Torii (second gate) and
San no Torii (third gate).
The ordinal number decreases with the distance from the shrine, so
the closest to Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū is actually
San no
Torii. All were destroyed and rebuilt many times. Today's
San no Torii and
Ni no Torii were built in
reinforced concrete in 1934 and are painted bright red, the
remaining one is made of stone and was erected by
Tokugawa Ietsuna in the 17th century. We
know from the
Shinpen
Kamakurashi that until the
Edo period
the gate closest to the shrine was called
Ichi no Torii,
the middle one
Ni no Torii and the one closest to the sea
Hama no Ōtorii ("Great Beach Torii") (see the section
Hama no
Ōtori below). This was by far the holiest of the three, a
symbolic link between the city and the sea from which it
depended.
Wakamiya Ōji itself was a sacred and ceremonial road which led to a
sacred beach, and was used only for the shogun's pilgrimages to the
shrines in
Izu and
Hakone
(see also the section
Yuigahama), and during official
visits of important dignitaries . In May 1185
Taira no Munemori, captured after the
decisive Minamoto victory at the
battle of Dan-no-ura, entered Kamakura
with his son through Wakamiya Ōji. Normal people were rarely
allowed on it, but the Azuma Kagami records that on this occasion
it was lined with onlookers.

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Azuma Kagami tells us that, on its east side, in
Komachi
, there were the houses of the powerful and, for
almost the entire Kamakura period, the seat of the government
(called
Utsunomiya
Bakufu, first, and
Wakamiya Ōji Bakufu later).
The entrance of all buildings not belonging to the
Hōjō or the
Bakufu (with the curious exception of houses of
ill repute) had to face away from Wakamiya Ōji (today's
Honkaku-ji is a good example). Like today, the
social class of those living to the west of the avenue was in
general lower. The reason seems to be that, because six of the
Kamakura's Seven
Entrances faced west and any attack was in any case likely to
come from Kyoto, which lies in the same direction, Wakamiya Ōji had
a military value as a line of defense, and positions on its east
side were desirable.
Further south social status dropped even further, because near Geba
(see below) there were the pleasure quarters.
San no Torii

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Wakamiya Ōji begins at
San no Torii, which stands at the
exit of Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū. During the
Kamakura period, this particular gate used
to be also the point of departure of the three main routes in the
Kantō region of the old
Kamakura
Kaidō network of roads.
The Kamakura Kaidō, built by the shogunate
for its own use, consisted of roads which from all directions
converged on Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū
. It allowed quick troop movements from and
to Kamakura and was of great importance during the many internal
wars of the period. The three main routes were called , , and
.
The exact courses of the three routes aren't known and are the
subject of debate, but the following are the most widely
accepted.
From
Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's gate, the Kami no Michi passed
through the Kewaizaka Pass,
then Susaki, Watauchi (today's Fujisawa),
Karasawa, Iida (within today's Yokohama),
then Seya, Tsuruma (today's Machida),
Tamagawa, Bubai, Fuchū, Kokubunji,
Sayama, and Ogawa, then, at the Usui Pass, divided in three,
forming the (that went towards today's Nagano Prefecture
), (that went towards today's Gunma
Prefecture
) and the ,
that went towards Musashi Province,
today's Tokyo
Prefecture
. For
unknown reasons, this route appears to be what the Azuma Kagami
calls it
Shimo no Michi.
The road
called Yoko
Ōji
that from San no Torii goes to Kita-Kamakura
is still called "Kamakura Kaidō" once it leaves
town, and used to be the Naka no Michi. The
Naka no Michi departed from Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū with a
left turn and passed through the
Kobukurozaka
Pass,
Yamanouchi,
Ofuna, Kasama (within today's Yokohama), Nagaya,
Futamatagawa, and Nakayama, finally joining the
Kami no
Michi there.
The last road, known as the
Shimo no Michi was a branch of
the Naka no Michi that departed before Tsurumi (within today's
Yokohama), then crossed Maruko, Shibuya, Hatogaya, Yono, Iwatsuki,
Iwatsuki, Koga, and Yūki, then reaching Utsunomiya.
The dankazura and Ni no Torii

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Immediately after the
San no Torii begins the , a raised
pathway flanked by cherry trees which becomes gradually wider as it
goes toward the sea. This structure makes it to seem, when seen
from Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, longer than it actually is. It's lined
up with cherry trees which bloom every year in early April, when
many visitors come from all over the Kantō region to see them. Its
entire length is under the direct administration of the
shrine.
The stele under
Ni no Torii reads::
The dankazura is also called .In March 1182,
Minamoto no Yoritomo, wanting
his wife Masako to have a safe
delivery, had this sandō built from Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū
all the way to Yuigahama
's Great Torii. The stones and dirt
necessary were personally carried by Hōjō Tokimasa and by many samurai of
the Minamoto clan. The portion of the
dankazura from the second torii onward was
removed during the Meiji
period.
(Although this structure is as old as Wakamiya Ōji itself, the name
dankazura first appears in the Edo period in the
Shinpen Kamakurashi. During the
Muromachi period it was called, among others, Okiishi as the stele
says, , or ). The demolition of so much of the
dankazura
actually took place over a long time. The portion from
Hama no
Ōtorii to
Geba Yotsukado was
gradually demolished during the
Edo
period after having been damaged by an earthquake and a flood
in 1495. The July 26, 1534 entry of the
Kaigen Sōzuki tells us that damages from
floods were so great that pilgrims going to Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū
and other pedestrians had to take a detour. It also describes the
efforts of a private citizen who, entered priesthood, started
carrying dirt and stones to repair the Dankazura, and begging for
money to fix Geba's bridge.

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avenue was then further shortened in 1878 to let the new
Yokosuka Line pass through.
The two "lions" in front of Ni no Torii (visible in the photo) are
in effect warden dogs called , so called because they were thought
to have been brought to Japan from China via Korea, their name is
derived from , the Japanese term for the Korean kingdom of
Koguryo.. They are almost identical, but one has the
mouth open, the other closed. This is a very common pattern in
statue pairs at both temples and shrines (it is in effect Buddhist
in origin) and has an important symbolic meaning. The open mouth is
pronouncing the first letter of the
sanskrit alphabet ("a"), the closed one the last
("um"), representing the beginning and the end of all things.
Geba Yotsukado

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Between
Ichi no Torii and
Ni no Torii lies the ,
where Ōmachi Ōji crosses Wakamiya Ōji. The etymology of the name
Geba ("Dismount horse") is interesting.
Wakamiya Ōji used to pass over three bridges (see Edo period print
above): the first was Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's Akabashi, the second
was at
Ni no Torii, where a brook (now covered but still
visible on Komachi Dōri) crossed Wakamiya Ōji. The third was at
today's Geba, where, according to a brass plaque found on the spot,
the Sansuke river flows. Still according to the plaque, the river
was covered in the 1960s to ease traffic. Because at each bridge
there was a sign with the order to horsemen to dismount, they were
called respectively , and . Only the third name stuck. At Shimo no
Geba riders would get off their horses and proceed on foot, in
deference to the shrine ahead.
The stele in front of the gas station reads::
A long time ago, when samurai came to worship at
Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, they had to dismount from their horses
here, and for that reason this place was called Geba. The name has
remained. Geba has an important position within Kamakura and old
stories tell how it was often a battleground. It is said that, on
September 12, 1271 Nichiren, arrested in
his hut in Nagoe and on his way to the execution ground in
Tatsunokuchi to be beheaded, turned to Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū and
yelled: "Hachiman Bosatsu, if you are a kami, give me a sign
for the sake of Buddhism!"
The Azuma Kagami informs us that here in Geba Wakamiya Ōji stopped
to be a rich and stately avenue, and became the main street of a
bustling pleasure quarter.
The Geba Incident
At the end of the
Tokugawa
shogunate there were several incidents involving violence
against foreigners, the most famous of which is the
Namamugi incident. In 1864 two Britons
were slashed to death at this intersection by some Japanese
men.
On
November 22, 1864 British cartoonist Charles Wirgman and photographer Felice Beato were in Enoshima
near Fujisawa, where they
met Major Baldwin and Lieutenant Bird of the British garrison in
Yokohama. Wirgman invited the two men to join them, but
they refused because they wanted to go and see the Kamakura
Daibutsu
. On November 22 the two military men were
sketching near Wakamiya Ōji when they were stopped and murdered by
some samurai. Three men were caught and executed for the crime, and
the head of their leader was publicly displayed in Yokohama.
Baldwin and Bird were laid to rest in
Yokohama's
Foreign Cemetery.
The remains of Hama no Ōtorii

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About 300 m after Geba are the remains of the great
Hama no
Ōtorii. The name appears several times in the historical
records, and we know from the
Shinpen Kamakurashi that it indicated
what today we call
Ichi no Torii, the gate closest to the
sea. This symbolically and religiously important gate was destroyed
and rebuilt many times. The
Azuma
Kagami says that, on November 22, 1215, a new
Hama no
Ōtorii was built in Yuigahama to replace the old one which had
been destroyed by a storm. The replacement didn't last long,
because a strong earthquake (and the consequent
tsunami) destroyed it together with its shrine on
May 15, 1241.
The ruins that were found here belong to one of its many
incarnations. The spot is marked on both sidewalks by stone circles
which cover the actual remains of the
torii. On the
eastern sidewalk there's a small monument (see photo) that
reads:
History:
Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's southernmost torii, called "Hama
no Ōtorii" ("Great Beach Torii"), was first erected in 1180 and
then rebuilt several times.The remains of its pillars were dated on
the basis of objects found with them to the , and it's very likely
to be the one erected by Hōjō
Ujiyasu in 1553. According to Kaigen's diary, in 1535
An'yō-in
's Gyoku'un in a dream was asked to rebuild Hama
no Ōtorii and so, brought in the material via sea from the
mountains of Kazusa Province he
started the construction.The remains are about 180 m north
of Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's Ichi no
Torii, have an unusual structure and have been important in
determining the position of the original Hama no
Ōtorii.
Discovered during an archeological survey in February 1990Pillar
dimensions: 160 cm thick, length unknownStructure: Single core with
8 surrounding piecesMaterial: Core in hinoki,
rest in keyaki
Today's
Ichi no Torii is about 180 m to the south. We
don't know where
Hama no Ōtorii used to stand in the
Kamakura period, but it's certain that the shoreline a thousand
years ago was much behind today's, so the sea was probably very
close to the great gate. This particular
torii was the
point where Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's approach met the water, a
symbolic link between a road sacred to the city's tutelary
kami Hachiman and the sea. As such, it had great religious
importance. Since all the crossings with other big roads where
further north, this spot was probably not very frequented, but it
was here however that periodically was held a ceremony to calm a
wind called . Its great religious significance can be guessed also
from the fact that, during the
Muromachi period, every February the
Kantō Kubō (the shogun's
representative in western Japan) would come and walk seven times
around Hama no Ōtorii. The kubō would meditate at Tsurugaoka
Hachiman-gū for a week, and during that period he would walk seven
times around this great gate.
Ichi no Torii

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As already mentioned, we know that this
Ichi no Torii was
for most of Kamakura's history called
Hama no Ōtorii, and
that it is only the last of a long series. A bronze plaque (visible
in the photo) on it describes its historyOriginal text:
一之鳥居此の大鳥居は一之鳥居ともいひ、治承4年12月源頼朝の創建にかかり、壽永元年夫人政子築造の段葛と共に若宮大路の偉観たり。以来武門武将により再建修理を行ふこと数次。寛文8年徳川家綱祖母崇源院の大願を承け、備前犬島産花崗石を以て此の鳥居を始め、第二第三の鳥居を再興せり。就中此の大鳥居は夙に我が国石鳥居の範を仰がれ、明治37年8月国賓に指定せらる。然るに大正12年関東大震災の際、柱下部を残して悉く顛落大破せり。即ち文部省に請ひ、復讐の速ならむことを計りしが、昭和9年文部技師阪谷良之進同嘱託大岡實に依り、稍く重修の設計成り、同11年3月国庫補助並に東京上田ちた近田三郎両名の献資を以て工を起し、同年8月其の功を竣へたり。本工事は神奈川県知事半井清監督の下に施工し、専ら古法を尊び菖材の再用を旨とし、補足材は之を犬島に求め、東西柱上部笠木及貫中部同東部西沓石北側の7個を加えたる外、苟くも景観の美を損せさらしむるに力めたり。:
Ichi no Torii
This Great Torii is also called Ichi no Torii. Its
construction was started by Minamoto no Yoritomo in December 1180
and finished in 1182 together with the dankazura by his
wife Hōjō Masako, bringing the
magnificent Wakamiya Ōji to completion.It was later repaired
several times by the shogunate. In 1668, Tokugawa Ietsuna, on his grandmother
Suugen'in's request, used Mikage stone from the island of Inushima
near Bizen
to rebuild
not only this torii, but also Ni no Torii and
San no Torii. This Great Torii was considered a
magnificent example of stone torii, so in August 1904 was
declared a National Treasure. Save for the lower part of its two pillars,
it was seriously damaged during the Great Kanto
Earthquake
of 1922. The Ministry of Education
immediately made plans for its reconstruction, and in 1934 the
project was entrusted to Sakatani Ryōnoshin and Oka Hiroshi, who in
a short time planned the necessary repairs. In March 1936, work was
started with the financial help of the National Treasury, of Mr.
Ueda Chita and Mr. Kanda Saburo, and finished in August of the same
year. The job was entrusted to the direction of Nakarai Kiyoshi,
governor of Kanagawa, who in respect of tradition reused as much as
possible the old parts, and requested the necessary stone
replacements from Inushima. In addition to obtaining the seven
stone pieces from the original source, he was careful to preserve
the general look of the monument.
Hatakeyama Shigeyasu's grave

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few meters past
Ichi no Torii, on the eastern sidewalk
there's
Hatakeyama Shigeyasu's grave
, consisting of an imponent
hōkyōintō and of a black stele
erected in the 1920 which explains the circumstances of his death.
Its text reads:
Hatakeyama Shigeyasu's residence
Hatakeyama Shigeyasu was Hatakeyama
Shigetada's eldest son. He had had a quarrel with Hiraga
Tomomasa, who was Hōjō
Tokimasa's son-in-law. Tomomasa hadn't forgotten the fact and
so spoke to Tokimasa against both the Hatakeyama. Tokimasa himself
hadn't forgotten how Shigetada had, following Minamoto no Yoritomo's will, tried to
protect the shogun's son and heir Yoriie, and was looking for an excuse to
kill them. Having received from shogun Sanetomo the order to arrest the
Hatakeyama, he surrounded Shigeyasu's residence with his soldiers.
Shigeyasu fought well, but in the end was killed. The day was June
22, 1205, and this is where the residence stood. The day after,
Shigetada himself was tricked into going to Musashinokuni's (a
region in the north eastern part of Kanagawa) Futamatagawa, where
he was killed.
Erected in March 1922 by the Kamakurachō Seinendan
In spite of the traditional attribution, who the grave belongs to
is a mystery, and even the year of its construction is uncertain.
Nonetheless, because Shigeyasu suffered from
asthma and was having an attack when he was killed in
battle, the
hōkyōintō is popularly known as Rokurō-sama
(from Rokurō, his childhood name) and is supposed to have the power
to cure colds and cough.
Yuigahama
Wakamiya
Ōji ends next to the Namerigawa
's estuary at Yuigahama
. During the
Kamakura period it was called . It was
considered sacred to the
Minamoto and,
before visiting shrines in
Izu o
Hakone, the shogun would always descend Wakamiya Ōji
to purify his body here.
Notes
References