Osorezan

This beautiful scene is Osorezan... known in English as the "Mountain of Dread" or "Gateway to Hell". It's hard to describe the atmosphere. The English brochure that we picked up on site states, "People who live in the region have developed the belief that everyone will go to Osorezan after death... The sulfurous valley in the depth of this mountainous area becomes a land of salvation, where absolute peace and happiness are freely given..."

An article I found online, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fv20061222a1.html paints a far more grim picture. "There's no getting away from the dispiriting atmosphere that hangs over Osorezan. It is Sai no Kawara that gets perhaps the most visitor attention... It is to this grim realm that children who predecease their parents - and are thus unable to repay those parents for having giving birth to them - are condemned. As penance, they are obliged to build up stone cairns, only to have foul demons with an attitude problem come along and smash them apart - and, for good measure, torment the little souls with fond memories of the happiness they knew as living children. Sole protector of the children is the bodhisattva Jizo... driving the demons away."

The statues at the entrance to the area seem to point more towards a "Gateway to Hell" type of place and less like a "land of salvation".

This is, hands down, the creepiest statue I've ever seen.

Osorezan, according to the brochure we picked up, is one of the three holiest sites in all of Japan.

This is the temple just inside the entrance. Past the temple were walking paths that wound through the valley and out to the lake.

It is a beautiful, eerie, and sad place. The valley itself is very quiet, but as you walk along the paths you can hear steaming, hissing, sulfurous caldrons that bubble up from under the earth.

If you look closely, you can see the steam coming up from these vents. You could feel the heat from them as you walked by.

When the wind blows you can hear the whirring of pinwheels - offerings left by parents for their deceased children.

There are rock cairns everywhere, and sometimes tucked in among the rocks are small gifts or statues. I think this must be Jizo, believed to be the protector of the souls of deceased children.

The whole valley smells of sulfur, and there are a couple of small streams of sulfur water that cut through the valley.

Not much grows in the sulfuric environment, but the few trees that did exist had sandals tied in their branches. Mourning family members leave the sandals for Jizo, to protect his feet as he walks among the sharp rocks of Sai no Kawara.

More statues of Jizo, I believe.

Beautiful scene, until you realize that the pool in the front of the picture is a bubbling with sulfuric acid.

No matter how bizarre the beliefs about Osorezan might be, it still tends to be a very moving experience to go there. It's impossible to forget, as you walk around the tiny statues and pinwheels and food offerings, that there are very real people hurting in big ways over their departed loved ones.