Hirakiki Jinja

Hirakiki Jinja.

In southern Kagoshima, on the Satsuma Peninsula at the foot of Mount Kaimon, sits a shrine that watches over what is, by far, the most photographed mountain on Kyushu.

Mount Kaimon — the local people call it the Satsuma Fuji — rises 924 meters from the coastal plain in a perfect cone, with the Pacific Ocean spreading out behind it. From a boat, looking back, the mountain seems to float on the water. From the land, in the early morning, mist often rises around its lower slopes, leaving the perfectly conical peak suspended above the white.

The shrine sits at the foot of this mountain, facing it directly. The main approach has been deliberately oriented so that, walking toward the inner sanctuary, you also walk toward the mountain.

This is one of Japan's southern shrines associated with the legend of Urashima Taro — the fisherman who visited the underwater dragon palace, returned with a forbidden box, and opened it to find that hundreds of years had passed without him knowing. The story has many local variations across Japan; this region claims that the famous box, the Tamatebako, washed ashore on a nearby beach.

A small wooden box, said by tradition to be the actual Tamatebako, is preserved in the shrine treasury.

The story is impossible. The mountain is real. Together they sit, with this shrine in front of them, in the southern light.

Stand in the courtyard. Mount Kaimon rises ahead of you, sometimes clear, sometimes wrapped in mist.

Some places hold a story and a landscape together, knowing they belong to the same thing.