2018-04-20

Ariakeyama Ariakesan Nagano

- BACK to the Daruma Museum -
. Japanese legends and tales 伝説 民話 昔話 - Introduction .
. Tengupedia - 天狗ペディア - Tengu ABC-List.
- - - for Hachimen Daio, see below
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. Ariakeyama 有明山 Ariakesan, Mount Ariake - Nagano 

Nobutaroo 信太郎 Nobutaro
Once Nobutaro went with a friend to 有明山 Mount Ariakeyama.
When they tried to jump over the Tenguiwa 天狗岩 Tengu boulder, their bodies became an enormous in size and they jumped over 馬羅尾谷 Baraodani valley and disappeared.
Nobutaro's father 久作 Kyusaku, who had lost his only son, went everywhere to look for him. He could not find him and had to work in the fields all alone from that time on.
He build a small sanctuary for Nobutaro, 信の宮 Nobu no Miya.


有明山 Mount Ariakeyama (2268m).
Ariakeyama is also called
Shino Fuji 信濃富士 Mount Fuji of the Shino region.

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- quote -
Ariake-yama (2268m)
Today, rather few people know Ariake-yama.
Of those who do, not many pay the mountain much regard. And, although the ridgeways between Yari-ga-take and Tsubakuro may be crowded enough to qualify as an Alpine “Ginza”, fewer still pay much attention to Ariake-yama even when they find it rearing up at them on their way to the foot of Tsubakuro. Rather, their eyes are drawn to the more imposing heights beyond. Ariake, it seems, has been consigned to the meizan of past ages.

In former times, though, people would direct their gaze not to those indistinct higher peaks but to the shapely mountain right in front of them, revering Ariake-yama as the Mt Fuji of Shinano Province. In an age when the Northern Alps were still “terra incognita”,
Ariake was celebrated by no less a poet than Monk Saigyō:

In Shinano on a day
It sent me awestruck on the way
To Hosono, the sight
Of mighty Ariake on the right


And then there are these lines by Monk Yūgyō:

By this moon’s kindly light
I will not lose the narrow
Road to Hosono, although
It leads me under Ariake’s height


- Ariake-yama seen from Otensho-dake; print by Yoshida Hiroshi -

According to an old chronicle, the mountain was opened in the second year of Daidō (807), when the great avatar Tohanachi Gongen was enshrined there at a place sacred to Ame-no-Uzume, where this goddess of dawn, mirth and revelry had manifested herself as a Buddha to save all living things. The mountain was once called Tohanachi-dake or “Door Away Peak”, in honour of the legend in which the sun goddess Amaterasu shut herself up in a cave and was coaxed out again when the goddess Ame-no-Uzume performed a comical dance. At which the god Tajikarawo-no-mikoto wrenched away the cave’s door and hurled it to earth at this very spot.

I came across this chronicle, the Record of Ariake’s Inauguration (Ariake Kaizan Ryakki), in Mr Kumahara Masao’s book on the dawn of Japanese mountaineering. By this account, the mountain mystic Yūkai, finding it lamentable that people had altogether given up climbing this sacred mountain, set out with his youngest brother in the sixth year of Kyōho (1721) together with fifteen or so villagers from the hamlet of Itadori at the mountain’s foot, and found his way over trackless slopes to the summit. There they stayed overnight and descended the next day.

The first path up the mountain was presumably opened on this occasion, as the chronicle says. And after a small shrine was installed on the summit, people came every summer, from far and wide, in droves to climb the mountain.

For evidence that this custom lasted into the Meiji period, we need look no further than Walter Weston, the mountaineering missionary and so-called Father of the Japan Alps, who climbed Ariake on August 14, 1912, in the first year of Taishō. Presumably he’d heard of Ariake’s reputation as a “meizan” of long standing. Most people associate Weston with Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps (1896), and rather fewer are aware of his later book, The Playground of the Far East (1918), which also concerns itself mainly with the mountains of Japan. This is probably because there is no translation. It is in this later book that he describes his ascent of Ariake.
- - snip snip - -
And then it’s easy to understand how Ariake came by its title of Shinano-Fuji.
- source : onehundredmountains.blogspot.jp... -


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Azuma fushi 安曇節 song
「なにを思案の有明山に小首かしげて出たわらび」
- reference source : toki.moo 961 - - tba


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. Japanese legends and tales 伝説 民話 昔話 - Introduction .

Nakatsuna koo 中綱湖 Lake Nakatsuna
Once upon a time, Mount Ariake and Lake Nakatsuna were fighting about which one was higher.
Then one day a pregnant woman came along and looked at mount Ariakeyama. She said laughingly: "Well Ariakeyama is not that high ... "
Since that time Mount Ariakeyama stoppe getting higher.


yakoo no tama 夜光の玉 a ball of light in the night
In the center of Mount Ariakeyama, there is a ball of light.
Because of this, the valley at its foot are never completely in the dark. They can never loose their way in a dark night.

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. Onipedia - 鬼ペディア - Oni Demons of Japan .

- - - Hachimen Daioo 八面大王 "Great King with Eight Faces" - - -
魏石鬼 八面大王 (ぎしき はちめんだいおう) Gishiki Hachimen Daio is a legendary figure in Nagano.
Gishiki no Iwaya 魏石鬼の岩屋(ぎしきのいわや) Cave of the Gishiki Demon

At the foot om mount Ariakeyama there lived the farmer 弥左衛門 Yazaemon with his son 弥助 Yasuke.
The son has been abducted by a Demon named Hachimen Daio 八面大王. Yasuke grew up to be a fine young man. One day he helped a yamadori 山鳥 pheasant.
Three days later Yasuke med a beautiful young woman and married her. But Hachimen Daio became quite jealous and wild again.
When 坂上田村麻呂 Sakanoue no Tamuramaro came tho the Kannon Hall to pray, He had a vision telling him to use the feathers of a pheasant tail to make an arrow.
When Yaskue heard this, he begun to worry. But his wife, the incarnation of the pheasant, offered her tail feathers and then disappeared.
With this arrow, the evil Hachiman Daio could be shot down and driven away.
- Another version of this legend tells of Yazaemon being kidnapped by Hachimen Daio while he was looking for medicinal herbs in the forest. His wife had bo bring up Yasuke all by herself.

. Sakanoue no Tamuramaro 坂上田村麻呂 (758 - 811) .



- quote -
鬼神「おのれ田村麻呂、またお前か」(有明山魏石鬼)」
Once upon a time in the Heian period, there lived a demon named 魏石鬼 Gishiki at Mount Ariakeyama in Nagano.
He called himself 八面大王 the "Great King with Eight Faces".
He used all kinds of bad tricks and witchcraft and eventually the court in Kyoto send Sakanoue to drive him away.
- reference source : toki.moo.jp/merumaga/noinakami... -


八面大王足湯 Hachimen Daio Ashiyu - Hot spring and foot bath

(Azumino)


- quote -
Daio Wasabi Farm was opened in 1917
and is named after the ancient local hero, Hachimen Daio, whose spirit is also said to be the farm's protector.
- source : notesofnomads.com/daio-wasabi-farm -

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明科町 Akashina

momiji onibito もみじ鬼人 Demon Momiji "red leaves.
Momiji Onibito was the wife of Hachimen Daio, but they quarreled all the time. Then came Tamuramaro and killed Hachimen Daio. He also tried to kill Momiji, and his third arrow hit her.
But later she she came back, all crying with pain.

monomi-iwa no oni 物見岩の鬼 the demon from Monomi Rock
The demon from Monomi Rock was very bad, stole things and tormented the farmers.
Tamuramaro killed him also.

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大町市 Omachi

Near the かや場 Kayaba reed field is a huge rock of about 1.5 m length.
Once uopn a time, when Hachimen Daio lived at Mount 矢沢山 Yazawayama a blacksmith brought his tools there to make weapons to fight this Oni, Hachimen Daio got angry and threw the rock in his way. They also say Tamuramaro used this rock to test his sword, so there is now a cut of about 30 cm in the rock.

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- reference source : nichibun yokai database -

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- - - Gishiki no Iwaya 魏石鬼窟 "Cave of the Gishiki Demon" - - -
古墳 Kofun Tumulus




This is a rock chamber where the demon Hachimen Daio is said to have hidden,
The ceiling of the chamber is one huge boulder.
Nearby are more boulders, the footsteps of Hachimen Daio 八面大王足跡岩

ドルメン式古墳
長野県安曇野市穂高有明宮城


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. Tengu 天狗と伝説 Tengu legends "Long-nosed Goblin" .
- Introduction -



. Join the Tengu friends on Facebook .

. Tenguiwa, Tengu-Iwa 天狗岩 Tengu rocks and boulders .

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. Tengu 天狗と伝説 Tengu legends "Long-nosed Goblin" .

. Tengupedia - 天狗ペディア - Tengu ABC-List.

- Yookai 妖怪 Yokai Monsters of Japan -

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. Join the friends on Facebook ! .

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- - - - - #ariakeyama #ariakesan -
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