S P O T ／ SPOT-065

Seki Kannon-yama Park Stone Buddha Group

関・観音山公園の石仏群せき・かんのんやまこうえんのせきぶつぐん

Behind the preserved Edo-period post town of Seki — one of the best-conserved old-road districts on the historic Tōkaidō highway — a forested hillside park hides thirty-three small stone Kannon figures, carved in the late Edo period and arranged along a meandering walking path that climbs to a viewpoint overlooking the Ise Plain. Like the cliff Buddhas at Ishiyama, these thirty-three figures form a 'copy pilgrimage' (utsushi-reijō) of the famous Saigoku circuit, allowing villagers and travelers staying overnight in Seki to complete a symbolic version of the Kansai pilgrimage in an hour's walk. Most visitors to Seki never leave the main highway street and so miss this hillside entirely. Those who climb up are rewarded with a quieter dimension of the post town's culture — the mountain religion and Kannon devotion that ran underneath the commercial bustle of the road — and with a sweeping view east across the plain toward Ise Bay.