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| Crest of the Miura Clan |
A former Imperial Japanese military acoustic location station, a long disused and increasingly decrepit sentinel from the wartime years, still sits in Tokyo Bay's Uraga Channel near the Kannonzaki Lighthouse here.
The station, built in 1937 to detect submarines, is about 10 meters off the shore on the eastern tip of the Miura Peninsula. The closest land is managed by the ministries of defense and finance, adjacent to Kannonzaki Park. The concrete oval structure rises about 5 meters above the sea's surface. Many spots on its outer wall have crumbled under the steady toll of wind and waves, exposing rusting reinforcing steel.
It was breathtaking to see this relic of war soaked in the midsummer afternoon sun, framed by the blue sky and blue sea.
According to a history book compiled by the Yokosuka Municipal Government and published in 2012, the former Imperial Japanese armed forces began fortifying Tokyo Bay in the Meiji era (1868-1912), building artillery batteries at the bay's mouth along both the Miura Peninsula to the west and Cape Futtsu in Chiba Prefecture to the east. The military built the acoustic location station in 1937 to catch the sound of enemy submarines accessing the bay, but it never entirely fulfilled its function.
The Ministry of Finance, which inherited the station from the former military, says it has no plans to make the facility a public relic of war because of its aged condition and location in the sea.
But as a witness to history, the facility's condition -- deteriorating without repair or conservation work -- is proof of the fact that this place was at war until 76 years ago.
There are temples all over Japan, and in just about all of them you’ll find some sort of Buddhist sculpture or painting. What are much rarer, though, are magaibutsu, or giant Buddhist images carved into mountain rock walls.
However, we recently heard about a magaibutsu on a mountaintop not far from Tokyo, and so we went to see it for ourselves.
The carving is located in the town of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 45 minutes south of downtown Tokyo. Getting off the train at Keikyu Oppama Station, we made our way to Takatoriyama Park, where a sign labeled magaibutsu (磨崖仏) pointed us in the way of the statue.
The “yama” part of Takatoriyama means “mountain,” but with the elevation at the peak being just 139 meters (456 feet), experienced alpinists might scoff at the name as an exaggeration. The path gets very steep in parts, though, and it’s not a straight shot to the top either, as it rises and falls repeatedly as it winds its way towards the peak.
As you leave the sounds and crowds of the lower parts of the park behind and below, the paved path intermittently gives way to soil and grass.
While the hiking course isn’t treacherous, it’s a comprehensive workout for the legs, as it continues to undulate on its eventual ascent.
After about 10 minutes, we came to a bend in the trail…
…and once we came around it, we saw what we’d come for: the magaibutsu.
Looming above us and framed by lush greenery was a carved statue of bodhisattva Miroku Bosatsu, also known as Maitreya. The eight-meter (26.2-foot) tall carving shows influences from the Gandhara art style that mixes Asian and western aesthetics, and Miroku Bosatsu’s kind and serene expression had a calming effect on us as we gazed up at it.
As we mentioned earlier, these kinds of statues aren’t particularly common in Japan, and many of the ones that do exist were made in the late Heian period (which ended in 1185) or Kamakura period (1185-1333). Standing there in the clearing alone with the magaibutsu, it did feel like we’d discovered an ancient artifact, but it turns out that the statue is remarkably new, having been created by a local artisan in 1965, who spent a full year carving it.
But what it lacks in physical age, it makes up for in significance as a symbol that Japan’s present is still connected to its past, and we’re glad we took the time to visit one of the country’s newest magaibutsu.
