Tondabaya City- Nishikiori Jinjya 富田林市の錦織神社

Fallen out of reach
Washed down in the current
One stone in many

Kawanishi Station is not the most difficult of Japanese terms to decipher. Kawa 川　is river and 西 is West. I think you can put the two together as it were! To get to Kawanishi it is a modest train ride outside of Osaka with a few connecting trains involved. What's funny, is that while I thought I was heading West (-Nishi) I was really Heading South-East of Osaka.... My confusion of course is from the name of the station I was headed to versus the name of the town. The town name is Tondabayashi, which changes everything! -Who names the train station different from the town anyway!

I didn't have much time to plan my trip here or research my destination. In fact I found out it was my destination on the morning I left. A friend of mine was celebrating the anniversary of his father's death with a meinichi (命日)。 Originally the ceremony was going to be held at Tennoji but was changed to his family's house in Kawanishi at the last minute. To add to the confusion... My friend decided to give me all the directions in Japanese... over a telephone.... Which is not an easy thing for a slow guy like me to figure out!

I was late and missed the actual ceremony because of the change of venue. I did however get to talk to the Buddhist Monk (Obousan or Souryo お坊さん / 僧侶）who performed the ceremony. Afterwards, we went to the cemetery on Mt. Roko (Rokosan) for a private ceremony at the grave. It was quite an experience.

We stopped here, at Nishikiori Jinja to look around after the graveside offering. There is very little out there as far as any information about this Temple. The best I could do was a clip from the "Historical Dictionary of Osaka and Kyoto, by Ian Martin Ropke" (Which sounds like a cool book by the way.) The shrine was apparently build in 1363. Otherwise, there isn't much in the way of information about the shrine.

Outside the front of the shrine are two square pits full of river rocks. The rocks sit below the cleansing basin, (みたらい）。　　Apparently if you carry one hundred stones from one pit to the other, you can make a wish come true. There was a stone post that had, 百度石, engraved on it. This translates to "100 times stone." What is interesting is that I saw this same thing at another shrine in Osaka near Tennoji. So it must be a fairly common practice.

Just behind the lion guardians in the alcove is the Palanquin used to carry the portable shrine for festivals. This portable shrine is called a danjiri (だんじり). Apparently danjiri is the Kansai-ben form of mikoshi (神輿）.

One may notice the presence of lions when entering a lot of shrines and temples in Japan. You may also notice that one lion has its mouth open while the other one has its mouth shut. Those lions are symbolic of the Yin and Yang. I'll see about posting more on the lions in the future.

Sorry about such a limited amount of information on this location. If I find out more I'll add to the post.




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