Mt. Shirataki

Mt. Shirataki is a steep, 227 m high mountain with rocky outcrops located on the northwestern side of Innoshima Island. The mountain was originally a place where ascetics retreated to practice among the striking rock formations. It’s covered in Buddhist statuary, and it makes a great half-day hike.

Innoshima was one of the bases of the Murakami, a maritime warrior clan that dominated the Seto Inland Sea in Japan’s medieval period. In 1569, Murakami Yoshimitsu, the sixth head of the Innoshima Murakami clan, built the Kannon Hall temple as a base to watch over the strategic Mekari Strait between Innoshima and Mukaishima islands.

Centuries later in 1827 during the late Edo period, a wealthy merchant from Shigei in Okayama, Kashiwabara Denroku established the syncretic Ichikan-kyō religion based on the common principles between the Shintōism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Christianity was forbidden at that time. His disciples, including stonemasons from Onomichi carved a multitude of stone statues including Buddhas, arhats, and tengu. Some of the statues featured forbidden crosses. This drew the attention of the authorities of the Hiroshima clan who brutally interrogated Denroku. He was ultimately acquitted but died soon after.

Today, around 700 statues remain on the mountain. In spring, the many cherry trees on the mountain blossom, dropping their petals among the statuary. From the observation deck on the very top of the island, you can see a long row of statues, many of the Geiyo Islands, the Innoshima Bridge, and several shipyards, a legacy of the maritime clans.

A stone behind the main hall of the temple is the subject of a legend concerning tragic love. A local man left his fiancée to become a sumo wrestler in Edo, promising to return after three years. When he failed to return, the lady drowned herself in the sea. When eventually he came back, he learned that an incarnation of the woman had appeared as a rock, so he carried the rock on his back from the sea to the Kannon Hall atop Mt. Shirataki and spent the rest of his life making offerings to it. Counterintuitively, the rock later became known as Koishi-iwa (Love Rock), and a legend arose that touching the rock would make love come true.

In addition to the Kannon Hall at the top of the mountain, there’s a temple gate on the side of the mountain with two fine stone Niō guardians, and an Okunoin inner shrine, which is a very large rock.