When Katsushika Hokusai was nearly 90 years old, he was invited to stay in Obuse four times by a patron from Obuse whom he met in Edo. He was said to have walked 250km one way in 8 days, so even though he was almost 90 years old, he had great physical strength to walk 30km a day. That’s probably why the paintings had such power. The last ceiling painting in his later years is in Gansho-in Temple. In addition to Hokusai’s paintings, it is also famous as the place where the haiku poet Issa Kobayashi wrote a haiku about frogs, and the mausoleum of Masanori Fukushima, a man of great service in establishing the Toyotomi government, who was demoted to Obuse by Tokugawa Ieyasu. During the off-season, community buses are not running, so you have no choice but to walk towards the mountain.
An old guide with a strong voice explains that the phoenix drawn is a symbol of longevity, and that is why plants such as pine trees drawn on its body were growing. The paintings were drawn directly on 12 cypress boards and pasted together on the ceiling, and since they used a lot of gold leaf and pigments ordered from Edo, the patron must had been very wealthy. When I sat in the recommended sitting position, the phoenix’s eyes looked extremely sexy. This must be a picture drawn by an old man who was almost 90 years old !
There is also the Hokusai Museum in town, where paintings drawn on the ceilings of festival stalls are on display.
Although it has nothing to do with Hokusai, there is Jokoji Temple, which has a beautiful thatched roof, near Gansho-in Temple. This temple is famous for its slackline club. That’s why the World Cup of slackline was held in Obuse for the first time in Asia.
