Koyasan Trail: In the Yagiyama settlement (Yaki-yama) upstream of the Iwashina River, people once burned the mountain to clear land, so it came to be called “Yaki-yama.” From that settlement, a three-kilometer walk into the mountains brings you to a hidden, tranquil realm where sheer cliffs of strange rock rise along a mountain stream. This place is called Koyasan. Long ago it served as a practice site for shugendo ascetics of Shingon esoteric Buddhism, and many stone Buddhist statues stand here. ☆A legendary site linked to a famous priest☆ There is even a legend that Kobo Daishi once visited this place but left because the smell of fertilizer from nearby fields was impure and the valley was not deep enough; he later went to Kishu (Wakayama Prefecture) and established Mount Koya. Supporting that tale, a practice site called “Enma Shingyo” on the cliff’s mid-slope once enshrined a statue of Kobo Daishi, though it has since been relocated to Eizen-ji Temple in Yagiyama. In the late Edo period, a monk named Taizen trained at Enma Shingyo, traveling to nearby villages to perform prayers. His reputed spiritual powers earned him the honorific title O-Daishi, and his devotees grew to some 200 people. When he left the area, he left sutras and priestly robes with the local Taguchi family as mementos. The family preserved a written box inscription noting that Taizen was from Mikawa (Aichi Prefecture), that he visited in the first year of Tenpo (1830) to enshrine a likeness of Kobo Daishi, that he stayed in retreat for about a year, and that many followers gathered. Another tradition says that during the Kenkyu era (1190–1199), the priest Mongaku also stayed here in retreat; when he tried to leave after completing his training, wild roses tangled in his robes and would not let him go. Mongaku then returned to the rock cave and continued his practice. Since then, locals have called those wild roses “Mongaku roses.”