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.
In the age of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism, Mount Norikura was a god in itself: Norikura Daigongen. A gongen is a Buddha or bodhisattva who takes a temporary form and appears as a Japanese god. Before the Meiji-era separation of Shinto and Buddhism, people looked up to the whole mountain as the body of the deity.
Two traditions tell how the summit shrine began. In the first year of Yowa, 1181, a retainer of Kiso Yoshinaka climbed to scout the province of Hida, enshrined a golden statue, and prayed for victory in battle. The other says that in the second year of Daido, 807, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro climbed and prayed. For neither is there a record that can be confirmed.
In the Edo period, Enku is said to have climbed the mountain. He is said to have shut himself in prayer in a small rock cave directly below the shrine of Asahi Gongen.
The Meiji separation of Shinto and Buddhism changed mountain worship greatly. The age when the mountain itself was the body of the god ended, and the mountain came to be enshrined under the name of a shrine.
Dainichidake is held to be the rock seat where the gods dwell, the inner sanctuary of Norikura Hongu, and entry is still forbidden.
At Tatamidaira stands Nakanomiya, a place for praying from afar. Built in 1953 to pray for the safety of climbers and visitors, it lets people put their hands together to the four deities without climbing to the top.
The footsteps of those who honor the mountain still go on, to the summit and to the small shrines along the way.
