A god in a cave,
a famous dog's grave, a tomb.

A cave, a burial mound, a famous dog's grave, a shrine carved with a water god — beyond the four stories introduced above, Jinseki Kogen holds many more historic sites and legends. An old shrine guarded by a deep grove, a camellia that has bloomed for centuries, traces of prehistoric daily life, and a stone tablet carved to honor the labor of nameless people. Here are a few more of these stories.

After the Battle of Sekigahara, the area now known as Sanwa passed through the hands of several feudal domains, including the Fukushima and Mizuno clans, before ultimately becoming a detached holding of the Nakatsu Domain, ruled by the Okudaira-Matsudaira family. The site of the present-day Jinseki Kogen Town Hall is said to have been the seat of the governor's office (daikansho) that administered this territory.

A local figure of the Murata family is said to have been appointed as daikan (regional administrator) and to have offered his own residence as the site of the office; a diagram recording the layout of the buildings at the time has also survived. A stone monument marking this history still stands quietly on the town hall grounds today.

A note. The Nakatsu Domain was based in what is now Nakatsu City, Oita Prefecture — far from this mountainous corner of Bingo. That it held a detached territory here is a reminder that early-modern domains were not always geographically contiguous.

The novelist Ibuse Masuji (1898–1993) wrote "Black Rain" (Kuroi Ame), a novel depicting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath. Later adapted into film and television, it is considered one of the defining works of postwar Japanese literature. The story is said to have grown out of Ibuse's real friendship with a man from the Obatake area of the former Sanwa Town.

While staying at an inn along a mountain stream run by this man, Ibuse heard the story of the man's niece, who had been exposed to the atomic bomb, and is said to have drawn on her records and the testimony of local people as he wrote. The work began serialization under a different title in 1965, was retitled "Black Rain" that same year, and was completed in 1966.

Today, a literary monument inscribed with a passage from the novel stands in Tsutsujigaoka Park, near the man's former home. Speaking quietly of the horror of war and the value of peace, this monument is a reminder that Jinseki Kogen is not only a land of legend, but also a place deeply tied to the memory of modern Japan.

Jinseki Kogen town is home to many cultural properties designated at the national, prefectural, or town level. Each such designation is a mark of publicly recognized value, and offers a way of placing the stories introduced here within a firmer historical context.

• Tatsunokuchi Kofun — Hiroshima Prefectural Historic Site (designated 2009)
• Main hall & gate of Mitsusue Seiryu Shrine — Town-designated cultural property
• The camellia of Kyosaiji Temple — Hiroshima Prefectural Natural Monument (1981)
• The sacred grove of Kameyama Hachiman Shrine — cedars and hemlocks 300 years old

Designated or not, most of these cultural properties have been protected and passed down over many years by the hands of local people themselves. Official "designation" is something that came afterward; their true value lies in the generations-long practice of care that has carried them to the present.

A place known as "Uta no Shimizu" (the spring of the poem) and its hall carries a tradition that Saigyo, a poet-monk of the late Heian period, once visited. This is the poem he is said to have composed there.

Dip your hands into the clear water, and it is transparent to the bottom; even the reflections of passers-by seem to look cool — a poem that conveys just how deep an impression this pure water left on a traveler crossing the highland. Alongside legends of the gods, this traveler's gaze, too, is part of the memory of this land.

Beyond Uta no Shimizu with its ties to Saigyo, the Sanwa area also carries a tradition of a spring known as "Nagaiki no Mizu" (the water of long life). No record survives to confirm the origin of the name, but the fact that legends of pure water are scattered across the highland, not confined to a single place, speaks to just how highly its people have long valued water.

A mountain where stars fell, a stone shaped like a turtle, a gorge bearing the name of Taishakuten, kagura that calms the Kojin, and caves, tombs, and a famous dog's grave. What these stories scattered across Jinseki Kogen share is a single practice: people sensing the presence of gods or something sacred in things found in nature — mountains, stone, water, caves — and telling, enshrining, and dancing that presence down to the present day.

Many of the traditions introduced on this site were compiled in later times from administrative records, local gazetteers, and oral tradition, and are not necessarily corroborated by contemporary primary sources. Even so, the very care with which these stories have been handed down speaks eloquently to the depth of faith among the people who have lived on this highland.