From Cat Shrines to Sacred Mountains: Teaching Shugendo in Fukushima

Teaching a Yamabushi / Shugendo Course at Fukushima University

Sep 14, 2025

From Monday to Wednesday I taught an intensive course on Shugendo at Fukushima University.1

Shugendo!

My initial thought was ‘if only Shayne’s upcoming book would come out a few months sooner’, because then I’d have something rather than my practice to date to base the course on.

But then again,

Shugendo!

Shugendo, what we yamabushi practice, is 100% about the experience. Theory is more of an afterthought. Unfortunately, it was a university course, and afterthought is what university courses care about the most, but I managed to balance that by taking the students out as much as I felt reasonable.

In other words, I’m pretty sure the students were happy about the structure of the course, because not only did they get credits for going outside, visiting a mountain shrine, chanting, and meditation (!), after the first day I picked up two extra students. One student in particular was so impressed on the first day they dragged along not one, but two of their cronies.

I ended up designing the course around as much practice outside as possible. This meant quite a few temple / shrine visits, and also a visit to Shinobu-yama, a mountain (in English it would be classified as a hill) right in the middle of Fukushima City.

But Shinobu-yama is not just any mountain.

The view from Shinobu-yama’s First Lookout. That I drove to…

It pains me to say, Shinobu-yama felt like a true representative of Japan with its unique mix of modern and traditional.

For starters, this mountain is a Shugendo peak, or at least it was in the past. Shinobu-yama has a direct connection with the Dewa Sanzan, The Three Mountains of Dewa up here in Yamagata where I train as a yamabushi.

The mountain had a few major Jinja (shrines):

Gassan Jinja (based on Gassan)
Haguro Jinja (based on Haguro-san)
Yudono Jinja (based on Yudono-san)
Hayama Jinja (based on Murayama Ha-yama)

Which is more than three.

Because the Dewa Sanzan used to be these four mountains; Yudono-san was considered the Oku-no-in, and not one of the three.

Anyway, Shinobu-yama is perhaps most famous for its Waraji festival, a festival featuring the world’s biggest Waraji, the straw sandals your flip flops (or Japan + sandals = jandals as we call them in New Zealand, true story) were based on (possibly).

The world’s biggest Waraji sandals (I assume) at Haguro Jinja on Shinobu-yama. They carry these up the mountain at the Waraji Matsuri.

So, you have these ancient shrines and temples with centuries-old festivals dotting the mountain but at the same time this wouldn’t be modern Japan without a few modern amenities (ahem),

amenities such as:

A Shinkansen Bullet Train track running right through the centre
Roads, for cars, that take you essentially to the summit
A shrine dedicated to cats (Neko Inari Jinja, see photos below)
People’s houses on the mountains

And of course,

Nuclear Waste.

I wish I was joking. One of the carparks was apparently a forest they cleared to dump the waste and the put a car park on top. I mean, they had to put it somewhere…

The one thing Shinobu-yama didn’t have, though?

A Family Mart Hybrid Supermarket.

A hybrid Family Mart / A-Coop (as in Co-op, not a chicken coop) Konbini Supermarket.

That was further on up the road, but it did have some delicious Keema curry croquettes, among other things you won’t see in a Konbini. Like wide aisles, shopping carts, and a proper dedicated fruit and vegetables section.

Overall, the students seemed to genuinely enjoy their time learning about Shugendō, not just the practice itself, but also the extra stuff I put in like Ojizo-san, Fudomyo’o, and the reason why Japanese people can be Buddhist and Shinto at the same time.

For me, it was a real privilege to share Shugendō, something I’m deeply passionate about (as you’ve probably gathered) in a university setting.