Osorezan Sanzu Legend

The Osorezan Sanzu tradition is an other-world view of Mount Osore in Mutsu, Aomori, in which the Shozu River flowing beside the temple is identified with the Buddhist Sanzu-no-kawa (River of the Three Crossings) that the souls of the dead are said to cross. By tradition Mount Osore was opened in Kasho 3 (850) by the Tendai master Jikaku Daishi Ennin; the desolate landscape of volcanic gas and sulfur and the white shore of Lake Usori-yama-ko are read as hell and pure land, joined as a place to soothe the souls of the dead. At the great summer festival itako (kuchiyose mediums) call down the dead, carrying the words of the dead and the living, a practice still continuing. The story has three layers: Jikaku Daishi's opening of the mountain and the identification of geographic features, the Sanzu and the Sai-no-kawara stone piles, and the itako kuchiyose and modern memorial customs. A Buddhist other-world view of hell, the Sanzu, and the Sai-no-kawara meets mountain belief and Tohoku shamanic mediumship in three layers, one of the three great sacred places of east Japan. With Mount Hiei's Enryakuji and Mount Koya, it stands as a Tendai Shugen ritual site. The center is Tanabu Usoriyama in Mutsu, Aomori, the outer rim of the caldera lake Usori-yama-ko in central Shimokita, with Bodaiji at its core. With the early-Iwate Hayachine mountain belief, the figure forms the Tohoku highland sacred network. Ennin's Itto Guho Junrei Koki and a genealogical link, Bodaiji tradition, the Aomori Prefectural Board of Education's Aomori Kenshi Minzoku-hen, and Yanagita Kunio's Tono Monogatari Shui are the basic references; Buddhist tales such as the Konjaku Monogatari-shu and Hosshinshu collected hell stories provide background.