This is a pine tree in Karasaki. It is the sacred pine tree of Karasaki Shrine and a solitary pine tree also called the “pine tree with a divine spirit at Lake Biwa”. According to the shrine’s history, the pine tree fell due to a strong gust of wind in 1581. Shinjo Naoyori, the lord […]
This is former Zeze Castle Town. In the Edo Period [in the early 17th century] Tokugawa Ieyasu abandoned Otsu Castle and built Zeze Castle, instead. The purpose of building the new castle was presumably to divide the roles of Otsu and Zeze; Otsu to be a commercial city and Zeze, a military city. Zeze Castle […]
This is the Great Buddha of Shiga. A large stone statue of the Buddha stands at the side of Shigagoe-no-michi road that connects Kyoto and Omi. A 3.1-meter high seated statue of Amida Nyorai is carved on a large piece of granite. It is believed to have been made in the Kamakura Period, around the […]
Otsu-e are folk art paintings that were sold in Otani-cho and Oiwake-cho within Otsu-juku, one of the post towns of Tokaido road, from the Kanei (Kan-ei) era in the early Edo period, the early 17th century. The folk art paintings with simple, free drawing lines and humorous allegorical subjects attracted people. As one of Matsuo […]
The Setanokara Bridge can be written in two ways in Japanese. It appears on the setting of a fierce battle during the Jinshin War (672). After that, it became a key point of transportation as the only bridge over the Seta River when entering the capital from the eastern provinces, and since it was always […]
One of The Eight Views of Ōmi . “The Distant View of Awazu”, with its row of pine trees painted from Tōkaidō’s Zeze to Seta. It is said that the rustling state of folliage from high winds are called “Seiran”. Currently, you walk in the restored pine tree row landscape that extends to the the […]
Ishiba’s Perpetual Lamp was built at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 2nd year of the Koku era (1845), and it was regarded as a marker of a ferry between the stone field and the Yabase on the other shore. On the platform of the large Perpetual Lamp with a height of 8.4 […]
This canal runs at the north side of the Keihan Electric Railway’s Miidera Station. Construction started on June 2, 1885 with the aim of supplying drinking water, irrigation, water transportation, and power generation to Kyoto. The construction was done over a period of 5 years and was completed in April 1890 (The second canal was […]
When crossing bridge of the Tsutsui river which is the precints’s boundary of the Miidera Temple, it is the first gate at the Gohosha’s shrine precints. It was originally built in the beginning of the Edo period in the form of Korai gate which was used for castles, and it was relocated to the current […]
When Chishō Daishi was crossing this stone bridge he ad a vision of the Seryūji , the temple where he had been in the Chinese capital, Chang’an, burning. So he intoned a mantra and the holy water, evaporating, formed a huge cloud around the bridge and headed to west. The fire was miraculously extinguished and […]