A red pavilion clinging to a cliff, a railing that is far too low, and hundreds of breasts hanging on the walls… At Abuto Kannon you pray for sailors, for births and for delicate crossings. With the Seto Inland Sea right under your feet.
A Prayer With a Sea View
A few kilometers from Tomonoura, in Hiroshima prefecture, the Numakuma peninsula ends in a rocky point in the Seto Inland Sea. This is where Abuto Kannon stands, a pavilion of the Bandaiji temple. Tradition dates the site back to 992, but the building that draws every eye today is from the late 16th century: lord Mōri Terumoto had it built between 1570 and 1573. Ever since, this little red pavilion has watched over sailors, pregnant women and young mothers. A rather vast job description for a temple clinging to a few square meters of rock.
Seen from the shore, Abuto Kannon seems to defy gravity. Its base hugs the tip of the cape, reinforced by a stone wall that extends the cliff. Above it, the pavilion leans out toward the sea, connected to the rest of the temple by a narrow covered corridor.
A Lighthouse Without a Light
For centuries, ships wove between the islands of the Seto Inland Sea, hugging jagged coasts and sometimes dangerous currents. Visible from the water, Abuto Kannon served as a landmark for sailors. You came to pray before a crossing, then to thank Kannon once back on dry land.
The Korean embassies that traveled across Japan in the Edo period left accounts of their visit. Hiroshige later included it in his Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces. Abuto Kannon was an image before it became a destination.
A Staircase Into the Void
To reach the pavilion you take off your shoes, then climb a staircase enclosed under a red timber frame. The climb is short, but the light changes with every step. The green of the forest appears between the slats; soon the blue of the sea takes over. At the top, a wooden walkway circles the building. The floor tilts slightly outward and the railing feels far too low for a place suspended above the rocks. The panorama is magnificent, with a touch of vertigo included in the visit. The sea is right below. No garden, no great courtyard, almost no distance at all between the temple and the landscape. The walkway serves as rampart walk, belvedere, and a test for the weakest knees.
Breasts on the Walls
After the blue of the sea, the interior holds a radical change of scenery. The walls are covered with breasts made of fabric, cotton or wood. By the dozens, sometimes by the hundreds, they form pairs, white, pink, yellow, round, irregular or carefully padded. They are ema, votive offerings left with Kannon. Some come with a wish to conceive a child or to carry a pregnancy safely. Others carry the hope of a safe delivery or of nursing going well, or thank the deity after the birth of a healthy baby.
The handwritten messages tell of very intimate worries entrusted to a benevolent figure. Each pair is made or personalized by the person who came to pray. The accumulation forms a strange wall of confidences: hundreds of bodies, fears and hopes sewn into fabric.
Kannon, Maternity Side
Abuto Kannon’s specialty has evolved with time. The pavilion once protected sailors above all; it is now associated with fertility, childbirth and breastfeeding.
Kannon embodies compassion, the kind that hears suffering and takes whatever form is needed to come and help. At Abuto, that compassion is expressed without detour. The pavilion houses a representation of Jūichimen Kannon, the eleven-faced Kannon, whose many faces symbolically let her watch for suffering in every direction. Facing the shipping lanes and surrounded by mothers’ prayers, she found the ideal observation post here.
Fragile, But Still Standing
Abuto Kannon holds in this face-to-face: outside, the light, the sea and the vertigo; inside, the half-dark and hundreds of prayers hanging on the walls. Sailors asked to come home without a shipwreck. Generations of women confided their longing for a child, their fear of childbirth, their trouble breastfeeding. The building looks ready to slide into the sea, yet it holds. For more than four centuries its red pillars have stood against the blue of Seto while the prayers keep piling up. Everything here feels fragile: the cliff, the pavilion, a crossing, a birth. So you hold on to the railing, and Kannon takes care of the rest.
The same stretch of coast, a few bends further: Tomonoura, the village of Ponyo, and Onomichi, the little Kyoto of Setouchi.
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