I’ve been wanted to go to Seto Shrine and finally made it yesterday. The weather wasn’t perfect w/ a bit of rain, but the temperature was just right for myself to take a stroll around Kanazawa Hakkei — Kanazawa Bunko area.

Kanazawa area is a coastal area. They are still small harbors with lots fishermen’s boat parked, fishing for living is still alive here (though it is diminishing) and you can see by the landscape of the old housing neighbor that yes, this place used to be a village for fishers. Just for fun I’ll post the Ukiyoe of Kanazawa Hakkei during Edo period.

Established in 1180, Seto Shrine is located what used to be a coastline (now being landfilled in to a street) overviewing the Hirakata bay. The route into this bay is very narrow and due to this, it caused tricky waves for a small boat to enter and back then, they were many accidents. The Shrine was then built to wish good luck to the boat sailing in/out and later, during Kamakura period, many Shogun came to pay respect ( this port was also a gateway to Kamakura city) which made this Shrine well known.

Anyway what I found interesting was the little altar placed in the carved rock behind the main Shrine. You would have to walk behind the main shrine to see this. I see this structure a lot in bay area Yokohama and it gives us the hint of how this area used to look 1000s of year ago. It’s really great to see that these kind of landscape are still kept and preserved for us to be seen.