A rice merchant turned stone sculptor
Set at the top of the hill, this atypical collection of more than 700 stone statues is the work of one tireless man: Yasukichi Iwaoka. As a young man, he walked the 1,200 km of the 88-temple pilgrimage of Shikoku and came back deeply marked by it.
Years later, having become a prosperous rice merchant, he decided to recreate a miniature pilgrimage of 88 statues on a hill in Takanabe to soothe the spirits of a plundered cemetery. At the start of the Showa era, many reckless excavations and lootings took place at the nearby Mochida tumuli.
Yasukichi Iwaoka then commissioned a stone sculptor to carve 88 statues in tribute to the deceased.
88 deities + an eclectic collection of folk statues
While the stone sculptor crafted the 88 statues, Yasukichi watched and learned. Once the order was completed, he decided to continue making stone statues himself, by the hundreds.
Today there are more than 700, scattered across the entire hill. Some are monumental, reaching up to 6 metres tall. The style, more rudimentary, evokes the statues of Easter Island or the totems of Native Americans.
Like the Mochida tumuli, this atypical collection of folk statues is now listed as part of the prefecture’s tourism heritage and attracts many visitors every year.
Yasukichi Iwaoka, a little like France’s Postman Cheval, toiled his whole life to create this fairy-tale place with his own hands.
