S P O T ／ SPOT-349

Tateiwa Rock (Shiawase Kigan, the Lucky Prayer Rock)

立岩（しあわせ祈岩）たていわ（しあわせきがん）

On the coast of Suo-Oshima (Yashiro Island) in the Seto Inland Sea, a roughly 40-meter-tall andesite rock soars upward like a single tower. Long venerated as the "male rock" (otto-iwa, the husband rock) symbolizing the masculine, it has a Bato Kannon — the Horse-Headed Kannon, guardian deity of agriculture — enshrined at its base. It is the taller of a pair of pinnacles known as the male Tateiwa and the female Tateiwa, a natural sculpture of hard high-magnesia andesite born of Setouchi volcanic activity about 13 million years ago that survived while the surrounding rock weathered away. Suo-Oshima has four curious rocks — Tateiwa, Ganmon, Obiishi, and Iwaya — and a folk belief called "Shiawase Kigan" (the pilgrimage of the lucky prayer rocks) survives, in which people circuit them to pray for marital harmony, household peace, prosperity of descendants, and good health and longevity. It is a place where one can feel the heart of the Seto Inland Sea's unpretentious folk world, in which sexual symbolism, stone worship, and Kannon devotion overlap.