Stepping Off the Tram
It was a March morning when I stepped off the Kumamoto City Tram at “Honmyoji Temple Entrance.” A breath of wind carried the last whisper of winter against my cheek, yet the sky above had softened to something unmistakably spring. This was a quiet residential neighborhood, a world apart from the bustle of the shopping arcades. As the streetcar’s bell receded into the distance, the stillness of the streets settled more deeply around me.
Walking on, I passed beneath an overpass and crossed a bridge over the Iseri River. Ahead, the silhouette of Honmyoji Mountain gradually took shape against the pale sky. Ancient stone lanterns lined the path on either side, and the bare treetops on the hillside were just beginning to show the first tentative green of the season. This was Nakao-yama — “Honmyoji Mountain” — rising to the northwest of Kumamoto Castle.
This mountain is closely tied to the name of Kato Kiyomasa: a fierce general who served Toyotomi Hideyoshi and became famous for killing a tiger on the Korean Peninsula during the Imjin War and Chongyu War. After returning from those distant campaigns, he built Kumamoto Castle and governed the domain of Higo with a firm yet benevolent hand. In 1611, at the age of fifty, he breathed his last. His dying wish, the story goes, was to be buried at the same height as the castle tower he had raised with his own hand.
Passing Through the Niomon Gate
About five minutes up a gentle slope from the tram stop, a massive Niomon gate rose into view, nearly twenty meters tall and fourteen meters wide. Marked with the snake-eye crest of the Kato clan, it received visitors with an authority that bordered on the theatrical. The gate was erected in 1920 in reinforced concrete, a donation from Kobayashi Tokuichiro — the same craftsman who gave the great torii to Izumo Grand Shrine. It is now listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.
On either side of the entrance stood the two guardian Nio figures — one with mouth open in “a,” one closed in “um” — their sharp eyes and powerful frames emanating a force undiminished by more than a century. I stood for a moment, head tilted back, studying them: sentinels at the threshold, holding the world’s misfortune at bay.
Beyond the gate, a stone-paved avenue stretched straight ahead. Cherry trees and twelve sub-temples — tatchuu, small independent temples within the precincts of a larger one — stood quietly on either side. The cherry blossoms were still weeks away, the buds tightly sealed, though a faint reddish warmth along the branches hinted that something was quietly gathering itself. Behind moss-covered stone walls, the rooftops of small main halls were just visible, each temple breathing the stillness of long years.
The avenue was nearly empty. An elderly couple walked a dog. A young man in a tracksuit climbed the stone steps in silence. Soft spring light pooled on the pavement, and it struck me that for the people of this neighborhood, the path to Honmyoji was neither a tourist attraction nor a solemn duty — it was simply part of ordinary life.
The Munatsuki Gangi — One Hundred and Seventy-Six Steps of Reckoning
At the far end of the path, before the main hall of Honmyoji, a staircase revealed itself, rising at an angle steep enough to give one pause. This was the Munatsuki Gangi — the “Chest-Thrusting Steps” — all one hundred and seventy-six of them, named for the way they seem to drive the breath from the chest. Each step was narrow, and I kept a firm hold on the handrail.
Hundreds of stone lanterns lined both sides of the climb. Some had toppled in the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes and still leaned at uneasy angles, unrectified — absorbed now into the texture of the place, the way a scar becomes, in time, part of a face.
With each step the view opened wider. I paused and turned: the city of Kumamoto lay spread below, and there, far in the distance, the tower of Kumamoto Castle was just discernible through the March air. The chill remained, yet warmth had found its way to the back of my neck.
Gazing at that view, I began to understand why Kiyomasa had chosen to rest at “the same height as the castle tower.” To raise the castle, to live within its shadow, and to lie forever facing it — in that choice dwelt something of a warrior’s pride, and a profound attachment to this land of Kumamoto.
At the top of the one hundred and seventy-six steps, the ground leveled into a wide terrace. Before me stood the Jochibo Mausoleum.
The Jochibo Mausoleum — Where a Hero Sleeps
The Jochibo Mausoleum takes its name from Kiyomasa’s posthumous Buddhist title, “Jochiinden.” The building itself is his tomb: a wooden likeness of the general rests within, and directly below, deep in the earth, his remains lie in eternal repose. Standing before it, the air felt different — a hushed solemnity that called for nothing but silence.
On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month of 1611, Kiyomasa drew his last breath inside Kumamoto Castle. He was fifty years old. The man who had slain a tiger, raised great fortresses, and devoted himself to flood control and the cultivation of the land — he had shaped the landscape of Higo in ways that long outlasted his years. And yet his name endures: even today, the people of Kumamoto speak of him as “Seishoko-san,” with the warmth one might reserve for a beloved grandfather.
Each year on the eve of July twenty-third — the night before his death anniversary — a ceremony called “Tonsha” takes place here: the faithful spend the entire night copying out the Lotus Sutra by hand. Kiyomasa was a devoted follower of the Nichiren sect, and Honmyoji remains to this day one of the great Nichiren temples in all of Kyushu.
A thin thread of incense smoke rose from the censer before the shrine. The scent reached me on the breeze. I pressed my palms together, closed my eyes, and for a moment — just a moment — four hundred years felt like no distance at all.
Three Hundred More Steps — Face to Face at the Summit
Behind the mausoleum, yet another staircase climbed toward the sky. A sign read: “300 more steps.” I laughed despite myself. But having come this far, retreat was not an option. The steps ascended in sets of twenty-five, winding toward the upper reaches of Nakao-yama.
The trees were still bare enough to show the sky through their branches, yet small buds had appeared at every tip — spring reaching the mountain a little later than the city below. The only sound was birdsong. I stopped several times to collect myself, and at last the staircase came to an end. There stood the bronze statue of Kato Kiyomasa.
With its pedestal, the figure commands considerable height. Kiyomasa stands in full armor, a general’s baton in hand, his gaze directed somewhere beyond the horizon. The statue was erected in 1935 to mark the 325th anniversary of his death, and for more than ninety years it has kept watch over Kumamoto from this height.
From the base of the statue, the view was extraordinary. Below, the streets of the city spread out in all their variety, and beyond them the tower of Kumamoto Castle rose clear against the pale March sky. Further still, the ridgeline of Mount Aso stretched across the spring haze, and somewhere at the far edge, the light of the Ariake Sea seemed to glint in the distance.
“Seishoko-san” and Kumamoto
From the tram stop to the mausoleum to the summit statue, the journey took about thirty minutes, pauses included. The gentle slope to the Niomon, the steep Munatsuki Gangi with its 176 steps, the quiet moment before the mausoleum, and then 300 more steps to meet the man himself — the route feels less like sightseeing than like a form of ceremony, a measured act of remembrance.
Kumamoto’s people know Kiyomasa as their great castle-builder, but they also know — and feel — that the fertile Kumamoto Plain owes much of its richness to the water-management works he put in place. The Kato clan’s reign lasted only two generations, yet the reverence and affection for Kiyomasa have endured for four hundred years, living on still in the familiar name “Seishoko-san.”
Descending the steps, I glanced back: the statue remained above me, still gazing toward the castle, immovable. Along the cherry-tree path, the tightly sealed buds stirred softly in the March breeze. A few more weeks and this path would be washed in rose-pink. Walking back the way I had come, I felt it with quiet certainty: the prayers for Kumamoto’s enduring prosperity are gathered here, in this place where “Seishoko-san” sleeps.
