Kirishima Range

Kirishima Range.

The Kirishima range is a cluster of volcanoes in the south of Kyūshū. The central peak, Takachiho-no-mine, is one of the most mythologically dense places in Japan: it is the spot where, in the founding chronicle of the Nihon Shoki, the heavenly grandson Ninigi-no-Mikoto descended from the high plain of heaven to begin the imperial line on earth. From this descent, in the orthodox imperial cosmology, the entire mythological-political genealogy of the Japanese state is reckoned. To climb Takachiho-no-mine is to climb to the literal landing-point of the founding myth.

At the summit a bronze halberd is planted upright in the ash. The Amenosakahoko, the inverted heavenly halberd, is said to be the weapon Ninigi planted on his arrival, a marker of the place where heaven met earth. The original is centuries old; what stands on the summit now has been replaced several times. The most famous photograph of the halberd shows the late-Edo reformer Sakamoto Ryōma visiting the summit on his honeymoon with his wife Oryō in 1866 — the first recorded honeymoon in Japanese history — and pulling the halberd partway out of the ground in a moment of mischievous historical theater.

The mountain that holds the myth is not stable. The Kirishima volcanoes are actively erupting in geologically recent time — Shinmoedake in 2011 and again in 2018 produced significant eruptions that closed trails for years afterward. The crater rims shift. The summit lakes — Onamiike, Karakuni-dake's small caldera lake — change color and chemistry on monthly time scales. The ground around Takachiho is, even on quiet days, perceptibly warm in places. Steam vents in unexpected spots. Fumarole hissing punctuates the quieter hours.

The Kirishima school of Shugendō, which flourished from the medieval period through Meiji, was deeply marked by this geological instability. Practitioners here developed a theology of impermanence that was more concrete than the doctrines elsewhere. The mountain might literally be different in spring than it had been in autumn. New craters opened. Trails disappeared. The sacred topography was not fixed; it was a participant. The yamabushi who trained at Kirishima understood, in a way other mountain practitioners had to take on faith, that the mountain itself was changing alongside the climber.

The pilgrim circuit ran through six main shrines distributed around the volcanic group — Kirishima Jingū (the principal one), Higashi-Kirishima Jinja, the high shrine at Onamiike pond, and others. The full circuit took several days. The connection to the southern Shintō tradition was deep; Kirishima sits within the cultural sphere of Satsuma, the southern kingdom that, in the nineteenth century, produced the Meiji Restoration leaders. The mountain's myth helped legitimize an entire political reordering of Japan.

Climb Takachiho-no-mine with this in mind. The path crosses old lava fields. The vegetation, where it grows back, is volcanic-tolerant: hardy grasses, dwarf shrubs, the occasional dwarf pine. The ash on the summit ridge crunches underfoot. The halberd rises from the gray. The myth and the geology cooperate. This is a place where the sacred can change its mind. Climb with attention.