KOYASAN, THE JAPANESE VALHALLA* 



By Eliza R. Scidmore 



THE Japanese Valhalla, the na- 

 tional necropolis, the greatest 

 graveyard in the Empire, is in 

 the sacred green grove of cryptomeria 

 crowning the summit of Mount Koya, in 

 Kishiu, some forty miles east of Osaka, 

 in the heart of the oldest Japan. The 

 site was chosen eleve'n centuries ago by 

 Kukai, the Tosa priest, best known by his 

 posthumous title of Kobo Daishi, a most 

 conspicuous and interesting figure in 

 early Buddhism. 



Kukai had a miraculous birth, an ex- 

 citing novitiate, and, being sent to China 

 as a government student, he succeeded to 

 the mystic and occult doctrines of the 

 yogi sect, as brought directly to China 

 from India by two Hindu patriarchs and 

 transmitted through seven chosen abbots 

 to himself. Before he left the seat of 

 continental culture and learning, with his 

 sacred books, pictures, and articles of 

 temple service, he hurled his mace, or 

 tokko, in air, and it flew through space to 

 land in the branches of a tree on Mount 

 Koya — like the golden torje at Lhassa, 

 which flew through the air from India. 

 Guided to the spot by the celestial ra- 

 diance streaming from the tokko, Kukai 

 fulfilled his vows of building a temple 

 there, and for the final years of his life 

 he taught the mystic Shingon doctrines, 

 the occult, secret laws, in the mountain- 

 top monastery. 



One meets memorials and traditions of 

 Kobo Daishi in every part of Japan, but 

 at Koyasan he is naturally all-pervading 

 and supreme. That forceful person could 

 have known no rest during his brief span 

 of sixty years, for ten men could hardly 

 have built all the temples and the shrines, 

 carved the statues, painted the pictures, 



planted the pine and camphor trees, 

 climbed the mountains, lighted the lan- 

 terns, started the sacred flames, or per- 

 formed all the miracles attributed to him. 

 He lived and moved in an atmosphere of 

 the supernatural, it would seem, time 

 doubtless adding to the number and qual- 

 ity of his miracles and attaching any stray 

 miracle to his credit. It was his early 

 manner, or first style in building, to con- 

 struct a temple in a single day, bidding 

 the setting sun stand still and light the 

 workmen at their tasks — and in proof one 

 such temple is shown intact today on the 

 shores of the Inland Sea. At Nikko he 

 persuaded the mountain priests and saints 

 that their rude deities and Shinto spirits 

 were but manifestations of Buddha. He 

 raised temples and shrines there by the 

 score, and hurled his brush across the 

 Daiyagawa to write a Sanskrit word on 

 an inaccessible rock, which every tourist 

 may see distinctly to this very day. An 

 image of Fudo which he brought from 

 China was carried to the seat of domestic 

 war, and after three weeks of ceremonies 

 and incantations by a great body of Shin- 

 gon priests, the rebels were overthrown, 

 and the image remains the object of uni- 

 versal pilgrimage at the great temple of 

 Fudo at Narita. He once exorcised 

 dragons by spitting at them the rays of 

 the evening star, which he held in his 

 mouth, and he cast magic spells and 

 transported himself, or his astral body, 

 at will. His followers believed the great 

 yogi to be the reincarnation of one of 

 Sakya's disciples, and the scoffing priests 

 of other sects were in time so dismayed 

 by his miraculous power that they were 

 converted, bowed to the pious juggler, 

 and flocked to his temple of Toji, in the 



* Article and photographs copyrighted by the National Geographic Society, 1907. 



