Maruyama Park

One of Sapporo's most well known parks is Maruyama Park. We've passed through a number of times on our way to various other adventures like the Hokkaido Shrine festival (aka the monkey show) and the Maruyama Zoo, but we still hadn't made it there to enjoy the park itself - specifically to hike Mt. Maruyama and to spend some time exploring the Hokkaido Shrine which is set in the park.

Wednesday, with these desitinations in mind, we set out for some more adventures. Before we even made it to the Mt. Maruyama trailhead, we were sidetracked by an unmarked trail leading to five monuments hidden deep in the forest.

I've grown a little lackadaisical about translating the monument info signs lately. To be fair, I didn't even try with these, but we have found that often there are quite elaborate momeuments to things like a children's song about spring, or a specific poem about the winter, etc. It makes me wonder how strange our memorial statues must seem to foreign visitors to the US.

After our little detour, we made it to the trailhead which began at a small temple (apparently it was so unnoteworthy that I didn't manage to take any pictures of it).

This map was provided for our guidance. The route was about as clear as mud...

...luckily we had stopped at the park visitor's center to use the bathroom and grabbed some crude maps provided there!

After crossing a small creek to the temple grounds, we arrived at the start of the hike.

We had read a little about the hike on the subway ride over and knew that on the roughly 3/4 mile hike to the summit, we would pass 88 statues of Kannon. After reading this, more questions ensued, so Fiona and I finally did a little research. We have encountered Kannon before, while visiting the cave in Jozankei, and learned that she was the Buddhist goddess of mercy. What we learned from our research this time led us to a slightly better understanding of the Buddhist religion in general, although our grasp is by no means thorough.

While Buddha is the central figure associated with the Buddhist religion, practicers actually recognize a vast array of dieties - including multiple Buddhas. One of the most common figures encountered in Japan (especially at temples) is Kannon - a slender either obviously feminine or slightly androgynous figure known as the goddess of compassion or mercy. Kannon is not a Buddha, but rather a Bodhisattva - a being able to achieve Nirvana (a state of enlightenment or perfect peace and happiness where a being's individual desires and suffering go away - the equivalent in Christianity would be heaven) but delays doing so out of compassion for suffering beings. This is the first statue of Kannon we encountered in the temple courtyard before starting our hike:

What we immediately noticed beyond spotting Kannon were all the statues of children. More research when we got home told us that another very popular Japanese bosatsu (Japanese word for Bodhisattva) is Jizo, whose statue is often designed in a very childlike form. Customarily, Jizo has been knows as the guardian of expectant mothers, women in labor, children, firemen, travelers, and pilgrims. Modern adaptations of Jizo unique to Japan also name him/her as the guardian of unborn, aborted, miscarried, and stillborn babies as well as children who have died at a young age. We saw many, many Jizo statues on our way up Mt. Maruyama - certainly many more than the 88 statues of Kannon!

Most of the statues we passed were clothed, many in red hats and bib-like cloths. I've read a number of explanations as to why Jizo statues are often adorned in red, but the most common two (especially in Japanese Buddhist practices) seem to surround the protection of a sick or lost child. Grieving parents often purchase a Jizo statue representing a child. According to Japanese folklore, red is the color for expelling illness, and through a complex development of rituals that began around 600 AD, the color has become dedicated to healing. Thus parents of sick children dress Jizo statues in red in hopes of ridding their child of illness and bring them health.

More common though, is the practice of buying a Jizo statue representing a child who has passed away. Understanding this required that I learn a bit more about the Buddhist religion (admittedly, I knew very little to begin with). Buddhists believe all beings are born into one of the "six states of existence" (e.g. hell, life as an animal, life as a human, life among heavenly beings, etc). Upon death, they are reborn into either a lower (i.e. worse) or a higher (i.e. better) state depending on the previous life that they lived - hence the concept of karma. The state of their rebirth is decided in a realm of judgement. A being will remain in this cycle of death, judgement, and rebirth indefinitely until they are able to become free from desires and attain enlightenment. When a child dies, the belief is that its soul is trapped in judgement - although they have pure souls, they have not had a chance to build up karma making the judgement for the being's next state of existence impossible and leaving the being in limbo. Legend dictates that in these cases Jizo will rescue the beings of children by hiding them in the sleeves of his/her (red) robe.  Parents therefore cloth Jizo statues in red in hopes that Jizo will cloth them in his protection, more easily hide him in his robe, and ultimately deliver them to Buddha's paradise.

I have obviously greatly over simplified all of this (and in many cases edited some of the darker/scarier bits), but this is the general idea behind Kannon and Jizo and the red bibs and hats. If you're interested in learning more, I found this website particularly useful. Apologies for the slight digression, but we're so happy to have learned such an interesting piece of Japanese religion and culture, and quite frankly, I'm afraid I'll forget it three months from now if I don't document it here!

Okay, back to the hike! The trail started out as one long path through rows and rows of statues:

Don't worry! I didn't photograph them all, and this won't be a post filled with statue after statue. I'll just show you a couple of our favorites.

I'm not sure who this is supposed to be, but I'm thinking likely not Kannon - nothing about it gives the impression of compassion and mercy. Also, whoever he/she is, beer must be a favorite drink, because there were many left in offering...

Fiona was excited to spot these two fox statues. There's an entirely separate story about the foxes which I will save for another post.

This one reminded me of Mother Teresa for some reason:

Even this statue - which does seem to exude qualities of either Kannon or Jizo - kept with the red theme with a red pained throne and red toe nails!

On the way up, we also passed some of the most impressively massive trees I've ever seen.

This was the one and only peek of a view we saw as we hiked. I was a little nervous that the top might be too wooded to see much...

Nearly to the top of the mountain and the vegetation was still thick! It's hard to tell from this picture, but the climb was relentless. I nearly wrote this hike off as not worth it when I read that it was a less than two mile loop. What I again didn't account for was that it was largely all straight up or straight down!

Summit, to the left, return hike to the right.

Boy was I wrong to worry about a lack of views! The summit was amazing and we had it all out ourselves!

It wouldn't be a true Mommy/Fiona adventure if there wasn't some struggling with the selfie-stick...

...but I finally got it working!

After a hike down the back side of the mountain, we came out on this boardwalk built through the towering cedars. It was nice to walk back on level ground!

Eventually we made our way to the other side of the park to visit the Hokkaido Shrine.

This was another fascinating cultural lesson for us. First we learned about how the Shinto religion dictates one should "cleanse body and mind" before visiting the main shrine.

Next, we walked to the entrance to the shrine using care not to walk through the center of the entrance or down the center of the approach to the shrine. This is know as the "Sei-chu" - the path of the gods. Visitors to the shrine should walk to the left or right of the center.

When we reached the shrine itself, Fiona saw people throwing money into an offering box as part of a prayer ritual. Tradition dictates that this should be done by (1) removing any hat or cap, (2) throwing your coin into the offering box, (3) ringing the bell (if one is present) to call the god into the shrine, (4) make two deep bows, (5) make your prayer/wish in your heart, (6) clap twice, and (7) make one more deep bow. Here Fiona demonstrates what she saw others doing:

We very much enjoyed the shrine and learning about the some of the practices and rituals used at Shinto shrines. All in all it was a highly educational day!

Finally, we finished our day with a lunch so late it would probably be better referred to as dinner. And I think it's possible that this might have been the highlight of Fiona's entire day: "Mommy! I get to cut my pizza with SCISSORS!! (followed by lots of giggling while cutting...)."