Osorezan: Rendezvous with the Dead on “Mount Dread”

In the center of the Shimokita Peninsula, in the northernmost reaches of Aomori Prefecture, lies Osorezan (Mount Osore), one of Japan’s most sacred spots. Hito wa shineba oyama sa igu, say the locals: ”When people die, they go to the mountain.”

Since ancient times, Osorezan has been revered as a place where the souls of the dead congregate on their way to the other world—a kind of nexus between this life and the next. Even today, it draws thousands of pilgrims seeking communion with the departed.

Osorezan can refer to the vicinity around the temple Bodaiji, or the entire sprawling caldera with its eight peaks and volcanic lake, Usoriko (Lake Usori). The name Osore, which means “fear” or “dread,” probably derives from Usori or another Ainu place name. It is perfectly suited to the area’s bleak and desolate volcanic landscape.

The sacred Osorezan rises around Usoriko in the northernmost reaches of Aomori Prefecture. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

The shores of Usoriko are strewn with offerings to the dead, including pinwheels intended to comfort the lonely souls of departed children. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

Mounds of stones line the tract known as Sai no Kawara, a reference to the riverbank separating the two worlds in Japanese Buddhist lore. The cairns are placed there on behalf of children who died before they could perform their sacred filial duty to their parents. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

I made a quick tour of Osorezan some 20 years ago, but this time I really wanted to “get in touch” with the mountain. For that purpose, I opted to lodge at the Zen Buddhist temple Bodaiji, said to have been founded by the monk Ennin in 862.

With their sulfurous gases and blackened volcanic rocks, the slopes of Osorezan present a barren, eerie landscape evocative of the legendary Obasuteyama—a mountain where the elderly were once taken to die (according to ancient folklore). As one descends to the lake, the charred hellscape suddenly gives way to the ethereal view of a jade-green lake surrounded by sparkling white sand. This is Gokurakuhama, or Paradise Beach.

Usoriko and Gokurakuhama catch the sun’s first rays. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

A pair of Niō, or guardian kings, adorn Bodaiji’s temple gate. The Niō are said to be uttering the Sanskrit syllables ah and hum, signifying the divine breath and the cosmos in its entirety, from beginning to end. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

A rustic bath house on the temple grounds provides visitors with access to Yakushinoyu (named after the Buddha of healing), one of Osorezan’s sulfur springs. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

Bodaiji temple now belongs to the Sōtō sect of Zen Buddhism. It is closed in the winter, when the area is subject to heavy snowfall. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

“Where do people’s souls go when they die?” the priest asked in his sermon. “They go to be with their loved ones.” This made perfect sense to me. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

The brook running beneath the red bridge is called Sanzu no Kawa, the Buddhist equivalent of the River Styx. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

Hand towels and straw sandals surround the stone image of the Tendai priest Ennin, said to have discovered Osorezan and founded Bodaiji in 862. Pilgrims offer up the objects as prayers to speed the souls of the dead on their journey to the afterworld. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

Jigoku, or Hell, is the popular name of Osorezan’s most forbidding tract, a rugged slope where sulfurous gases seep from volcanic vents and hot water burbles up from the craggy rocks. In recent years, scientists have theorized that primitive life may have originated in such hot springs or similar environments some four billion years ago, when volcanoes covered the earth. It may be that the ancients intuitively sensed the confluence of life, death, and rebirth in the otherworldly landscape of Osorezan.

Throughout this series, I have been circling warily around the ultimate question: What is death? My visit to Osorezan inspired me to revisit Lewis Thomas’s thoughts on the subject. As related in his 1976 book The Lives of a Cell, Thomas’s scientific research and observations as a physician led him to the surprising conclusion that “dying is an all-right thing to do.” Grappling with the cessation of consciousness, he mused, “I prefer to think of it as somehow separated off at the filaments of its attachment, and then drawn like an easy breath back into the membrane of its origin, a fresh memory for a biospherical nervous system.”

A view of the Six Jizō, corresponding to the six realms of existence into which souls are reborn in the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation. Jizō is a bodhisattva dedicated to easing the suffering of all beings. (© Ōnishi Naruaki)

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Generations of Japanese pilgrims have sought communion with the dead by traversing this “hellscape” on the sacred mountain Osorezan in Aomori Prefecture. © Ōnishi Naruaki.)