Multilingual AI audio guide exhibit on WOUDiO (PWA). WOUDiO pioneered the world’s first audio guide platform with built-in donation: listeners can support the cultural venue without leaving the listening experience. The text below is the localized description, details, and narration script for this audio guide stop.
A steep flight of great stone steps leads up to the Upper Shrine of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. Eight hundred years ago, on these steps, the third shogun of the Kamakura shogunate lost his life.
It was New Year of 1219, on a snowy night. Minamoto no Sanetomo had just finished a visit to the shrine to give thanks for his appointment as Minister of the Right, and he was coming down the steps when he was attacked. His attacker was Kugyo, Sanetomo's own nephew, who served as the head priest of Hachimangu.
Kugyo, it is said, lay in wait hidden behind the great ginkgo tree that towered beside the steps. For this reason the tree came to be called the Hiding Ginkgo. But this is a legend from a later age; the records of the time say nothing about a ginkgo.
Sanetomo was the leader of the warriors, yet he was a shogun who loved waka poetry. His poems were gathered into a collection, the Kinkai Wakashu, and they are still read today. With Sanetomo's death, the line of Minamoto shoguns that began with Yoritomo came to an end, and real power over the shogunate passed into the hands of the Hojo clan.
In March 2010, on a night of fierce wind, the great ginkgo fell, torn up at the roots. It was a tree said to be a thousand years old. Before long, new shoots sprang from the roots that remained, and today young branches are stretching upward. Part of the fallen trunk was also replanted close by.
The stone steps the shogun set out to descend on that snowy night still rise to the Upper Shrine at the very same angle.
