Haguro Shugendō

↑

Introduction

The Inner Dharma writing project started not because of my practice of martial arts but because of my interest in Shugendō, a blend of Buddhism, Daoism and mountain asceticism practiced in Japan.

Visiting sacred places has been an important component of my martial arts training over the years. It was while visiting the Dewa Sanzan area, including the Sanjin Gōsaiden (三神合祭殿) of the Dewa Jinja (出羽神社) on Mt. Haguro — the hall that jointly enshrines the deities of all three mountains — and the Hagurosan Kōtaku-ji Shōzenin (opens in a new tab) (羽黒山荒澤寺正善院) Kogane-dō in Haguro-machi associated with Haguro Shugendō, that I decided to focus my efforts on a practice of classical and traditional arts. The standalone Gassan Jinja (月山神社) itself stands on the summit of Mt. Gassan; what is reached on Haguro is the three-deity Gōsaiden.(Dewa Sanzan Jinja, n.d.)

Haguro means “black wing” — it alludes to the giant yatagarasu (八咫烏; eight-span crow), an important symbol in Japanese mythology. Yatagarasu is associated with divination and divine guidance, and is sometimes depicted with three legs; one common (and relatively late) interpretation reads the three legs as the ten-chi-jin (天地人; the three powers of heaven, earth and humanity). In Chinese mythology, the three-legged crow is said to dwell in the sun (日; sun).

2026 Update

Much more information is now available about practices like Shugendō. I recommend those interested in Shugendō to first read Ishizuchi-san on Western Mikkyō (opens in a new tab). Those interested in practice in the West would do well to visit karunamitra.org (opens in a new tab) for an attempt to correct misconceptions about the tradition.

Haguro Shugendō

Some Daitō-ryū sources state that Takeda Sōkaku’s grandfather Takeda Sōemon had been trained in Haguro Shugendō, and Takeda Sōkaku himself is said to have gone into retreat in the sacred mountains of Dewa.(Ikezuki Ei 2015) These are traditional, practitioner-side claims rather than independently documented facts, and should be read as such. They have intrigued many people over the years, especially Aikidōka interested in Daitō-ryū, since Takeda Sōkaku is reported to have made pilgrimage to Haguro and to have studied Shugendō kuji-goshinbō and other skills (possibly from Nakagawa Man’nojō). Saigō Tanomo (1830–1903) was a karō (家老; senior domain retainer) of the Aizu domain who, after the domain’s defeat in the Boshin War, served as a Shintō priest — negi (禰宜) at Nikkō Tōshōgū under his former lord Matsudaira Katamori (its gūji), and later gūji of Ryōzen Jinja.(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.) No mainstream source today describes him as a Shugendō practitioner, and the narrative that he instructed Takeda in an art called oshikiuchi (御式内) is a contested tradition rather than an established transmission.

In addition, Shugendō had a strong philosophical influence on many classical Japanese martial arts. Despite that fact, martial practice was generally the purview of the bushi and gōshi (郷士; rural samurai). There are very few yamabushi-related martial traditions surviving in Japan. Today, people will sometimes attempt to use mountain religion as a backstop for their practice because of its poetic allure (taking refuge in the mountains) and also because there is not as much public information available in English compared to other Japanese religions such as well-known Shintō shrines or Buddhist complexes.

The Sanjin Gōsaiden (Dewa Jinja) on Mt. Haguro

In the case of Haguro Shugendō, Hagurosan Shugen Honshū (羽黒山修験本宗) is the postwar institutional continuation of Haguro Shugendō, whose head temple (honzan) is Kōtaku-ji (荒澤寺) in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture, with Shōzenin (正善院) as its administrative head temple (honbō). It was made independent in 1946 (Shōwa 21) by Shimazu Dendō, inheriting the tradition maintained at Shōzenin through the Meiji disruption.(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.) According to the Shōzenin temple’s website, the head temple of Haguro had been the Tendai Jakkō-ji (寂光寺; now part of Dewa Sanzan Jinja) until the end of the Edo period.(Hagurosan Kōtaku-ji Shōzenin, n.d.) After the Meiji shinbutsu bunri, the functions of the temple side passed to Kōtaku-ji (荒澤寺) and its administrative office Shōzenin (正善院).

I visited Kōtaku-ji Shōzenin in 2005. The attendants there were quite pleasant and happy to have visitors, but with limited time and halting university-level Japanese it was not possible to learn anything about Shugendō in detail, despite my interest. I managed to connect later with members of the expatriate budō community in Japan who practiced Haguro Shugendō — it turns out our NYC Aikidō and Kempō instructor had no connection with Hagurosan Shugen Honshū.

Haguro Shugendō is an important cultural and philosophical aspect of Japanese culture in the Dewa area, which is near Aizu, and Mt. Haguro has been a pilgrimage destination for Aiki-jūjutsu practitioners since the time of Takeda Sōkaku, who spent time there. Takeda’s grandfather may have been a shugenja, and mikkyō (密教; esoteric Buddhism) chanting and breathing methods are important in some lines of Daitō-ryū. Okuyama Ryūhō (奥山龍峰, born Yoshiji), founder of Hakkō-ryū and a native of Yamagata, was a Daitō-ryū student under Matsuda Toshimi and later Takeda Sōkaku; Sō Dōshin (宗道臣), founder of Nippon Shorinji Kempō, is recorded as having attended a single day of a Hakkō-ryū seminar in 1948 rather than as Okuyama’s student.(Web Hiden, n.d.)(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.) There are pictures years later of important Aikidōka such as Shirata Rinjirō and Saitō Morihiro performing enbu (演武; public demonstration) in front of Hachiko’s shrine.

Hachiko-jinja (蜂子神社) at Dewa Sanzan

It is reasonable then to think that other Aikidōka, like our instructor and his Japanese friend in NYC, would find inspiration there. I myself have found Dewa Sanzan to be a wonderful, mysterious, place. That does not mean that every martial artist who visits Haguro, or even goes on a brief retreat there, has formal standing in Haguro Shugendō or is a shugenja (修験者; Shugendō practitioner) or yamabushi (山伏; mountain ascetic).

The bettō of Haguro during the transition is said to have been a man named Kanda (官田), who became the shrine priest (shashi, 社司) and took the name Haguro Uzen (羽黒羽前). The first gūji (宮司; head priest) installed at Dewa in 1873, when Buddhism and Shintō were split and Shugendō banned, was a young Hirata-school nativist scholar named Nishikawa Sugao (西川須賀雄), who drove the radical de-Buddhicization of Haguro before leaving in 1876.(Gotō Takeshi 1999)(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.)

Haguro-ha Shugendō generally traces its founding to Nōjo Shōja (能除聖者), identified with Prince Hachiko (opens in a new tab) (蜂子皇子; traditionally c. 542–641), son of Emperor Sushun. After his father’s assassination by Soga no Umako in 592, the prince is said to have fled north and opened Mt. Haguro, Mt. Gassan, and Mt. Yudono as sacred sites for mountain practice.(Dewa Sanzan Jinja, n.d.) This identification is better treated as a later regularization than as an early datum: the early-Edo Hagurosan engi does not name Hachiko, and his role as founder was foregrounded only after the Meiji shinbutsu bunri replaced the gongen with a recorded human opener.(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.) Hachiko is figured prominently on Mt. Haguro, where the Hachiko Jinja (蜂子神社) stands beside the Gōsaiden.

Much has been written about the Akinomine (秋の峰; autumn peak entry). It is a well-documented and important practice in Haguro Shugendō, and there are multiple retreats conducted by Buddhist-affiliated, Shintō-affiliated and independent revival groups today.

Other important founding figures in Shugendō, like En no Gyōja and Shōbō (聖宝) – Rigen Daishi (理源大師) – lived near Nara and Kyōto and are not associated with Haguro-ha Shugendō, but remained venerated by Honzan-ha and Tōzan-ha practitioners who had a presence on the three mountains during the Edo period. Ono-ryū (小野流) is the line of Shingon practice said to have been founded by Shōbō at Daigo-ji on Mt. Kasatori; it is not the family name of a line of Haguro-ha Shugendō practice in Dewa, but could plausibly have been represented as Shingon Shugendō on Mt. Yudono.

Yudonosan was administered by four Shingon temples. In the Kan’ei era these “four Shingon temples” (Dainichibō/Ryūsuiji, Chūrenji, Hondōji, and Dainichi-ji) jointly erected the hōkyōintō (宝篋印塔; a stūpa-form reliquary) on Dainichibō’s grounds.(Dainichibō, n.d.) Which of them was the lead temple is contested among their individual narratives.

The surimono’s colophon (analysed below) styles Dainichi-ji as 正別當, the standard account names Hondōji as principal, and Dainichibō styles itself 湯殿山総本寺 (head temple) and, with Chūrenji, credits Kūkai rather than Hachiko no Ōji as founder.(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.) So three of the four temples assert some form of primacy, and the foundation legend splits on sectarian lines.

The very notion of Dewa Sanzan as a group is itself in flux, in terms of the priority given to different mountains in the area. In the Edo period, Tendai groups headquartered on Mt. Haguro called the area Haguro Sanzan, and Shingon groups headquartered on Mt. Yudono called it Yudono Sanzan.

Dewa Area Tengu

Hagurosan Konkōbō (羽黒山金光坊) is the tengu assigned to Haguro in the Tengu-kyō (天狗経), the Edo-period esoteric (mikkyō) invocatory text that enumerates the so-called forty-eight tengu (四十八天狗). In the standard list it sits between Nikkōsan Tōkōbō (日光山東光坊) and Myōgisan Nikkōbō (妙義山日光坊).(Author unknown n.d.)(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.) A second, locally circulated figure is Hagurosan Sankōbō (羽黒山三光坊), described as the daitengu (大天狗; great tengu) governing the tengu who protect the three mountains and their practitioners, with an attendant (kenzoku, 眷属; familiar) named Enkōbō (円光坊), unusually classed as a “water tengu” (suitengu, 水天狗) said to guard the pilgrim boats on the Mogami River (最上川). The relationship between Konkōbō and Sankōbō is genuinely unresolved in available lore; they may be two aspects of a single figure or a true pair. There is also a folk identification of Sankōbō with Hachiko no Ōji (蜂子皇子), the legendary founder of Dewa Sanzan, holding that the founder became the mountain’s great tengu — though this rests on a single popular source and should be treated as devotional rather than documented.(Fushigi na Chikara 2015)

Akiba Sanjakubō (秋葉三尺坊) — the famous fire-prevention daitengu — is not a Haguro tengu, despite the near-homophony with Sankōbō. His tradition places his ascetic transformation at the Zaōdō (蔵王堂) in Echigo (越後; present Niigata), with a Shinshū/Togakushi (戸隠) birth and a later descent onto Akibasan in Tōtōmi. He appears in the same Tengu-kyō list under his own mountain.(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.)

Tenyu-sha (天宥社) shrine on Mount Haguro (1992) dedicated to Tenyu Betto, a monk who played a crucial role in restoring Mount Haguro.

Comparatively-named tengu attached distinctly to Gassan (月山) or Yudonosan (湯殿山) are not as easily found. The Tengu-kyō (天狗経) itself is a late, apocryphal invocatory text (an Edo-period mikkyō-style kaji liturgy, not a canonical sūtra), and its transmission is correspondingly loose. The text belongs instead to the Nihon Daizōkyō (日本大蔵経), the 1914–1921 compilation by the Nihon Daizōkyō Hensankai, which gathered Shugendō transmissions and minor liturgical texts that the mainstream canons omit. Within it, the relevant subcollection is the Shugendō shōsho (修験道章疏), which occupies volumes 17, 37, and 38 of the original Nihon Daizōkyō (= Shugendō shōsho 1, 2, 3). The most accessible modern form is the Kokusho Kankōkai reprint: Shugendō shōsho in three volumes plus a separate kaidai (解題; bibliographic-commentary) volume edited by Miyake Hitoshi, published by Kokusho Kankōkai in 2000.(Nihon Daizōkyō Hensankai 2000)(Miyake Hitoshi 2001)

The gongen of the three mountains

The honji-suijaku (本地垂迹) structure has each mountain’s kami venerated as a gongen (権現; “provisional manifestation”), understood as the local trace (suijaku) of an “original-ground” buddha (honji-butsu, 本地仏).

Dewa Sanzan Jinja’s own account frames this through Sueki Fumihiko’s typology of kami–buddha subordination and cites Togawa Anshō’s Shinpan Dewa Sanzan Shugendō no kenkyū for the interpretive claim that the practitioner experiences the deities’ efficacy as ōgen (応現), formless and omnipresent yet visible only to the believer.(Dewa Sanzan Jinja, n.d.)(Sueki Fumihiko, n.d.)(Togawa Anshō 1973)

Work by Togawa Anshō (戸川安章) — the foundational scholar of Haguro Shugendō — specifically Dewa Sanzan Shugendō no kenkyū (Kōsei Shuppansha, 1973) and its revised edition, and Dewa Sanzan to Tōhoku Shugen no kenkyū, are sources with further information.(Togawa Anshō 1973)(Togawa Anshō, n.d.) Roughly:

• Hagurosan (羽黒山) — honji Shō Kannon (聖観世音菩薩; the bodhisattva of compassion), assigned to the present (現世). The site’s deity is Ideha-no-kami, honji Shō Kannon; the institution was the Tendai temple Jakkō-ji, a branch of Rinnōji. After the Meiji separation of kami and buddhas the kami was reframed as Ukanomitama-no-Mikoto (identified with Ideha-no-kami).

• Gassan (月山) — honji Amida Nyorai (阿弥陀如来), assigned to the past and to ancestral spirits. Its honji is Amida Nyorai; the mountain was held to be where ancestral souls gather, and its bettōji was the Tendai temple Nichigatsuji at Iwanesawa. The post-Meiji kami is Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto.

• Yudonosan (湯殿山) — honji Dainichi Nyorai (大日如来), assigned to the future / rebirth. Its honji is Dainichi Nyorai, with the suijaku kami Ōyamatsumi-no-Mikoto, and the goshintai is a hot, reddish-brown spring-rock — the “speak not, hear not” object — making it the okunoin (innermost sanctuary) where yamabushi sought sokushinbutsu (即身仏; living buddhahood).

Unlike the two Tendai mountains, Yudonosan’s bettōji were four Shingon temples — Hondōji, Dainichibō, Chūrenji, and Dainichi-ji — with Hondōji as the principal administrator (shō-bettō). Its enshrined kami are given as Ōyamatsumi, Ōnamuchi, and Sukunahikona.(Dewa Sanzan Jinja, n.d.)(Haguro-machi Kankō Kyōkai, n.d.)

The traversal logic binding them is the sankan-sando (三関三渡): moving through Haguro (present), Gassan (past), and Yudono (future) as a passage through three “barriers,” conceived as a rebirth pilgrimage rather than mere geography. Yudono future/rebirth–Dainichi assignment is the doctrinal seat of the sokushinbutsu tradition at Dainichibō and Chūrenji — a thread that connects the gongen framework directly to material practice

Membership of the triad is not however historically stable:

• In the medieval reckoning Yudonosan was the sō-okunoin (総奥の院; overall inner sanctuary) and the “three mountains” were Gassan, Hagurosan, and Hayama — or alternatively Chōkaisan. In that older scheme the future/Yakushi position was held by Hayama or Yakushidake, with Hayama and Yakushidake assigned Yakushi Nyorai (future), while Yudono’s Dainichi was figured as transcending the three barriers altogether rather than occupying one of them. Yudonosan’s promotion into the modern triad, displacing Hayama/Chōkai, is itself a datable shift worth foregrounding.(Haguro-machi Kankō Kyōkai, n.d.)

• The gongen sit inside competing institutional claims. The Tendai-aligned mountains (Haguro, Gassan) were historically the “Haguro Sanzan,” and the Shingon side the “Yudono Sanzan,” reflected in the obsolete names Haguro-sanzan and Yudono-sanzan. Beyond the indigenous Haguro-ha — which fused Gassan ancestral-spirit belief — Tōzan-ha and Honzan-ha practitioners also operated at Dewa Sanzan, and these credited the founding to Kūkai or En no Gyōja rather than to Hachiko no Ōji; the Kūkai foundation (the shining leaf bearing the Dainichi mantra borne down the Bonjigawa) is the Shingon Yudono-ha’s account. So which founder, and by extension which honji emphasis, itself differs across sects.

Dewa Sanzan Museum Holdings

The Dewa Sanzan History Museum (出羽三山歴史博物館), which sits in the Hagurosan precinct, contains tengu carvings and calligraphy associated with the shrine. The two scrolls below function as a matched pair — the kami-side title and the Buddhist-side invocation, both from the Tendai-aligned (Haguro) pole at Dewa.

Both works are single vertical columns of large semi-cursive characters, and both are 御筆 (gohitsu; “from the brush”) of the Tendai zasu Jōshin hosshinnō (承真法親王, Kajii-no-miya, 1787–1841). The museum cards both read 天台座主梶井宮承真法親王御筆 — “by the brush of the Tendai zasu (座主; head abbot), the Kajii-no-miya Prince-Monk Jōshin.” Jōshin (承真法親王) served repeatedly as Tendai zasu (the 218th, 220th, 222nd, and 224th incumbencies) and was a son of Arisugawa-no-miya Orihito-shinnō. His dates are 1787–1841, and he carried the childhood names Kuni-no-miya and Naga-no-miya. That places both calligraphies in the late Edo period (Bunka–Tenpō, c. 1810s–1841).(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.)(Reichsarchiv, n.d.)

The reading “Jōshin” for 承真 follows the usual convention for 承- monastic names but is not furigana-confirmed here. Worth noting for provenance: the Arisugawa house was the home of the Arisugawa-ryū (有栖川流) calligraphic school, so a brush-piece by an Arisugawa-born prince-monk sits inside a recognized court-calligraphy lineage.

南無照見大菩薩 (Namu Shōken Daibosatsu)

The first image reads:

南無照見大菩薩

(Namu Shōken Daibosatsu): 南無 (Namu; homage, from namas) / 照見 (Shōken; “illumining insight / clear seeing,” carrying the Heart Sūtra resonance of 照見五蘊皆空) / 大菩薩 (Dai-bosatsu; Great Bodhisattva). In full: “Homage to the Great Bodhisattva Shōken.” The referent of 照見大菩薩 within the Dewa Sanzan pantheon is an unidentified divine title.(Jōshin hosshinnō n.d.)

正一位羽黒三所大権現 (Shō-ichi-i Haguro Sansho Dai-gongen)

The second reads:

正一位羽黒三所大権現

(Shō-ichi-i Haguro Sansho Dai-gongen): 正一位 (Shō-ichi-i; Senior First Rank — the apex of the ritsuryō court-rank system, here conferred on the deity) / 羽黒 (Haguro) / 三所 (sansho; “the three places,” i.e. the three mountains’ deities together) / 大権現 (Dai-gongen; Great Avatar). In full: “Senior First Rank, the Great Gongen of the Three Places of Haguro” — the title of the combined three-mountain deity as enshrined together at Haguro (the configuration of the Sanjin Gōsaiden). This very title, 羽黒三所大権現, was the deity venerated at the Haguro summit before the Meiji separation abolished the gongen.(Jōshin hosshinnō n.d.)(Wikipedia contributors, n.d.)

The pairing is the substantive point: one scroll gives the deity its Shintō court rank and gongen titulature, the other gives the Buddhist invocation (namu + bodhisattva) — the honji-suijaku duality rendered as two facing inscriptions, and pointedly in the hand of the Tendai head abbot, the Tendai-aligned (Haguro) pole rather than the Shingon (Yudono) one.

Next we find two Shingon-related scrolls:

三山本地刷物 (Sanzan honji surimono; "printed icon of the honji-buddhas of the Three Mountains")

Card: 三山本地刷物 (“printed honji-icon of the Three Mountains”) / 江戸時代 (Edo period) / 湯殿山　正別當　大日寺 (Yudonosan, Shō-bettō Dainichi-ji) / 出羽三山歴史博物館. The print shows the three honji-butsu, labeled in the image: 湯殿山 (top center, the crowned, elevated central figure = Dainichi Nyorai), 月山 (upper right, the standing buddha = Amida Nyorai), and 羽黒山 (upper left, the standing bodhisattva with lotus = Shō Kannon). The composition is itself an argument: Yudono/Dainichi is enthroned at the apex over the other two — the Shingon Yudono-ha’s hierarchy made visible, which is a discrepancy with the Hondōji-as-principal account.(Dainichi-ji n.d.)

It is a votive geju (偈頌; verse-eulogy) in kanbun praising the three honji and their salvific power. Working transcription, right-to-left, with unresolved graphs in 〔…〕:

1 億利非遐　信力不屈　親拜三尊來迎 2 十念不微　誓心〔決〕定　必滅五逆重障 3 内證法界　惠日不簡濁世　澤不〔…〕 4 加用不測智火　〔燒盡〕惡趣業果振 5 常〔懷〕恭敬室　聚集福壽無量之〔寶〕 6 一心〔稱名/植名号〕里面縛　所欲害身之族

Signature: 正別當　大日寺 (Shō-bettō Dainichi-ji), followed by a seal.

The colophon at lower left is signed 正別當 大日寺 (“Shō-bettō [principal administrator] Dainichi-ji”). The scroll’s signature and the museum card style Dainichi-ji as 正別當, whereas the standard modern reference names Hondōji as the principal of Yudonosan’s four Shingon bettō-ji. The standard account lists four Shingon temples for Yudonosan — Hondōji, Dainichibō, Chūrenji, and Dainichi-ji — with Hondōji as the principal bettō. The artifact thus records a competing precedence claim among the four temples; that tension is itself of note.

The votive verse filling the lower register contains the phrases 親拜三尊來迎 (reverently worshipping the three honored ones who come in welcome — raigō), 十念 (the ten recitations), 必滅五逆重障 (surely extinguishing the grave hindrances of the five heinous sins), 福壽無量 (boundless merit and longevity), and 一心 (single-mindedly). The register is Pure Land / esoteric salvific language praising the three honji.

The verse reads as a coherent arc from salvation to protection, which is itself informative about the print’s function:

• Columns 1–2 are the welcoming-descent and sin-extinction movement: faith’s power is unbending, so one reverently worships the raigō (来迎) of the three honored ones; the ten recitations (jūnen, 十念) are not slight, and the resolved vow-mind surely extinguishes the grave hindrances of the five heinous sins (goku jūshō, 五逆重障).
• Columns 3–4 are the wisdom movement: the inner realization of the dharma-realm (naishō hokkai, 内證法界), whose sun of grace does not discriminate against the defiled world (jokuse, 濁世), and the immeasurable fire of wisdom that burns up — 振, i.e. shaking loose — the karmic fruits of the evil destinies (akushu gōka, 惡趣業果).
• Columns 5–6 then turn protective/apotropaic: 常〔懷〕恭敬室、聚集福壽無量之〔寶〕 — “constantly cherishing the hall of reverence, gathering the treasure of immeasurable merit and longevity”, closing on a subjugation clause — 面縛 (menbaku; bound hand-and-face) and 所欲害身之族 (“those whose desire is to harm the body”). That final turn toward 調伏 (chōbuku; subjugation of malevolent forces) is characteristically esoteric, and fits a Dainichi-ji surimono whose apex deity is Dainichi.

The translation above is incomplete, and the major fragments are not found online; they are not standard phrases, so the printed collections cited below would need to be consulted directly.

弘法大師尊像 (Kōbō Daishi sonzō; "venerable image of Kōbō Daishi")

Card: 弘法大師尊像 / 出羽三山歴史博物館. The header cartouche reads 湯殿 (Yudono) beside a lotus-form crest. The icon is the standard seated Kōbō Daishi (Kūkai) type, rendered in gold line on a darkened ground: seated on a chair (kyokuroku, 曲彔), a five-pronged vajra (goko-sho, 五鈷杵) in the right hand and a rosary (nenju, 念珠) in the left, with a water vessel (suibyō, 水瓶) at lower right. This is the Shingon Yudono-ha’s founder-icon — the material counterpart to the Kūkai-foundation legend, set against the Hachiko-no-Ōji/Tendai-Haguro foundation.(Author unknown n.d.)

The first two images are the Tendai/Haguro pole (the gongen title and bodhisattva invocation in a Tendai zasu’s hand) and the second two represent the Shingon/Yudono pole (the honji triad printed at Dainichi-ji; the Kūkai icon).

References

primary

secondary