Yamadera

Yesterday my wife and I took a day trip to Yamadera, a large temple complex in the mountains along the train line from Sendai to Yamagata city. We left home around 8 a.m. and walked to the Yaotome Subway Station, then after a ten minute ride we got off at Kita Sendai Station and changed to the Senzan train line.

 The Kita Sendai station proper is under the dark gray roof. The light gray roof covers on of the passageways from the platform to the station. The yellow line is for people who have poor vision or who are blind. They are all over the city. You can feel the little bumps through the soles of your shoes.

 Just to the left of the above picture, a new building was under construction. I found it interesting that just before the train arrived, a supervisor came out with a bullhorn and told all the workers to move away from the tracks. They all moved to the far side of the building. The train arrived and we hopped on. For the first few stations it was crowded with college students on the way to class, but after that the train was quite empty and we got good seats with no trouble. Fifty minutes after boarding, we got off at Yamadera Station and I had my first view of the temple complex.

 The various buildings are scattered around the mountain on the right side of this picture. The main temple is higher and to the right of the large rock cliff in the middle of the picture, above another but smaller rock cliff.

Yamadera is actually a nickname for the temple, which was established by the Tendai Sect in the year 860. Here is what Wikipedia.com has to say about it.

Yama-dera (山寺 lit. "Mountain Temple"^?) is about a twenty minute train ride (Senzan-sen Line) northeast of Yamagata City, in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan at the foot of the steep hill Hōshū-yama. The temple is a nationally-designated Place of Scenic Beauty and Historic Site.^[1]
The area is named after the common name of the temple of Risshaku-ji (立石寺), founded in 860 AD by the priest Ennin (円仁) (AD 793 or 794–864), who is better known in Japan by his posthumous name, Jikaku Daishi (慈覺大師). In 847 he returned to Japan from China and in 854, he became the chief priest of the Tendai sect at Enryaku-ji. Risshaku-ji was founded as a branch temple of Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei near Kyoto. Even today the ritual fires brought from Enryaku-ji are still burning in the main temple. It developed into the major Heian period (794–1185) temple for rural Dewa province (now Yamagata and Akita prefectures).^[2] This main temple, the Konpon-chūdō, an important cultural asset, is said to have been built in 1356 by Shiba Kaneyori, lord of Yamagata Castle. Most of Risshaku-ji was destroyed during the local wars of the early 16th century and it was rebuilt in 1543 under the monk Enkai. By the Edo period (1600–1868) Risshaku-ji was a powerful institution possessing a fief of 1,420 koku.^[2]
The present Konpon-chūdō (Main Hall) is a Muromachi period (1333–1568) construction of beech, which is rare as a building material. The temples clinging to the steep rocky hillsides are picturesque and unusual. The thousand step climb through the dense cedar trees is worth making to the temples at the top and for the view from them. An important cultural asset, the Heian period seated wooden image of Yakushi Nyorai (the Buddha Bhaisajyaguru) is the principal image of the main temple. Yamadera holds many other important cultural assets in its treasure house, the Hihokan, including standing wooden images of Shaka Nyorai, Yakushi Nyorai and Amida Nyorai, a seated wooden image of Dengyo Daishi, a hanging wooden mandala of Buddha, and a stone monument of the Nyohō-kyō Sutra from 1144.^[3]
Yama-dera is where the well-known haiku poet Matsuo Bashō wrote his famous haiku "ah this silence / sinking into the rocks / voice of cicada" in 1689. A museum of Basho's writings and paintings and other related art, the Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum, is a short walk up the hill on the opposite side of the steep valley. In 1996 the Ministry of the Environment selected the cicadas of Yama-dera as one of the 100 Soundscapes of Japan.^[4]

 Still standing on the platform, I took this picture of Konpon-chudo (the roof on the right). The one important thing that the Wikipedia entry does say is that from the station to Konpon-chudo there are 1,000 steps and another 100 or more if you visit some of the side sites.

 This guide map is the first thing you see when you exit the station. You can see how many different places to see are indicated between the entrance and the top.

The sign over the door says that this is the Yamadera Hotel, but when we looked closer, it did not seem to be in operation. There was an exhibit of some kind inside but we did not stop because we were anxious to see the temple complex.