Gods dwelt
in stone, and in the mountains.

Jinseki Kogen is a relatively young town, formed in 2004 through the merger of the former towns of Yuki, Jinseki, and Sanwa and the village of Toyomatsu. Yet beneath that foundation lies the much older district name "Jinseki-gun," which continues from the ritsuryo era, and traces back — astonishingly — as far as the Nihon Shoki.

What this site wants to shine a light on is not a timeline of politics and warfare, but the memory of what the people of this land feared, worshipped, and handed down as "divine": a mountain said to have been showered with falling stars, a stone shaped like a turtle, a gorge presided over by Taishakuten, and kagura dances still performed today by seven kagura troupes. We introduce each of these traditions as faithfully to their sources as we can, without hiding the line between historical fact and legend.

On the evening of the first day of the intercalary first month of the first year of Taika (645), stars are said to have fallen from the sky, lighting up the area as if it were daytime. This is the legend of the mountain that rises 835m at the border of the former towns of Sanwa and Jinseki. Emperor Kotoku, upon hearing of the phenomenon, is said to have stayed on the mountain himself, witnessed the falling stars, and named it "Hoshi no Koyama" — the mountain where the stars dwell.

The way the story is told varies by source — from a variant in which a deity calling itself the Evening Star delivers three bright stars, to a tradition that Emperor Shomu and the monk Gyoki once made a pilgrimage there, to a dispute over whether the stone tower at the summit is "Emperor Kotoku's mausoleum" or "a great monk's memorial." Layer upon layer of story has accumulated on this single mountain. We trace the full picture on the next page.