Heisenji Hakusan Shrine

Moss is the first thing that registers at Heisenji Hakusan Shrine: a deep green carpet spreading beneath tall cedars on either side of the stone path, so even and so thick that the ground seems upholstered. Botanists have counted close to 120 moss species around the worship hall, sustained by the humid air of an enclosed mountain valley and heavy winter snow. The novelist Shiba Ryotaro, writing about the Echizen region, judged that Kyoto's famous moss temple looked almost laughable beside it. The grounds lie inside Hakusan National Park, and the shrine's main deity is Izanami.

The quiet is deceptive, because this was once one of the largest religious settlements in Japan. Tradition credits the monk Taicho, said to have been the first to climb sacred Mount Haku, with founding a temple here in 717. Heisen-ji became the Echizen-side base for pilgrims and mountain ascetics heading to the peak, later attached itself to the Tendai headquarters on Mount Hiei, and kept warrior monks of its own. After a fire in 1440 the shogunate allowed it to raise rebuilding funds from seven provinces, and in the late Muromachi period the walled precinct spread across roughly 1.2 by 1 km with dozens of shrines and halls, thousands of lodgings and some 8,000 armed monks. In 1574, during the Ikko-ikki uprising in Echizen, the whole complex was burned. It was revived on a far smaller scale, and in the early Meiji era, when Shinto and Buddhism were formally separated, the temple became a shrine and its Buddhist buildings were taken down.

What survives is atmospheric rather than monumental: stone walls and paved lanes of the lost town, excavated by archaeologists, and a main hall from the 1790s. The old approach, about 1.2 km long, is shaded by ancient cedars and beech; its paving stones are said to have been carried up from the Kuzuryu River by hand. The garden of the former Genjo-in residence was named a national Place of Scenic Beauty in 1930, and the precinct a national Historic Site in 1935. Katsuyama itself is a small city of about 20,000 people in the upper valley of the Kuzuryu River in Fukui Prefecture.

Getting there

The shrine stands about 4 km from central Katsuyama, the terminus of the Echizen Railway Katsuyama Eiheiji Line from Fukui. The nearest airport is Komatsu (KMQ), around 41 km away in a straight line. Road access is via Prefectural Route 132, the Heisenji line, which branches off National Route 157.