Hashigui-iwa Rocks

Hashigui-iwa is a line of rock pillars on the coast at Kushimoto, on the southern tip of the Kii peninsula. There are more than forty of them, large and small, running for about 850 metres from the shore towards the island of Oshima. They are designated a Place of Scenic Beauty and a Natural Monument by the state, and lie within the Yoshino-Kumano National Park.

The rock here was not all of one hardness. The sea has worn away the softer part and left the harder standing, so that what remains is a row of pillars, the tallest about 15 metres, spaced out in a line as though a bridge had once run along them. That is what the name says: hashigui means the piles of a bridge.

The line is explained in an old tale as the work of Kobo Daishi, the monk who founded the Shingon school, one of the schools of Buddhism in Japan, who is said to have wagered with an amanojaku, a mischievous demon, that he could build a bridge out to the island before morning. The pillars are what he put up in the one night.

The sun rises out of the sea beyond the rocks, and the view is on the national list of a hundred places for the morning sun. The shore nearby is also a breeding ground of the Styan's grasshopper warbler, a bird found in few other places.