昇る太陽に照らされる豊後二見ケ浦。
  • Kennan Area
  • Landscape

Bungo Futamigaura

Photography/TAKEUCHI Yasunori

Rocks of Male and Female that Stand Out

 The New Year is here. Bungo Futamigaura (Kamiura, Saiki) is one of the most famous places to view the first sunrise of the New Year’s day in Japan. The sun on the New Year’s Day is full of vitality, which brings all of us a great hope for the new year.

 The male rock is 17 meters in height, and the female rock is 10 meters. The shimenawa (sacred rope) laid between the couple rocks is 65 meters long with a maximum diameter of 75 centimeters and 2 tons in weight. Every second Sunday of December, 350 people, mainly locals, gather to weave a new rope and replace it. This is the largest sacred rope in Japan, having been registered in the Guinness World Records. Towards the end of the year to the new year, the rocks are illuminated at night. They will keep the lights on until the night of the 4th after New Year’s.

 The name Futamigaura came from the Futamigaura Coast of Ise (Ise, Mie Prefecture), which is also a famous place for the first sunrise, but the rocks and rope are almost twice as large in Bungo. Another one is Chikuzen Futamigaura (Shima, Fukuoka Prefecture), but this is a place where you go to look at the sunset.

 Since the ancient times, the sun was a god itself. People live by the sun. Not only people, every living creature, and even the earth itself is living by the sun. We call the children of the sun Hiko and Hime. Hiko as in men, and Hime as in women. After the dark night, which sometimes becomes the world of evil, the look of the morning sun rising makes you feel that life is regenerating. In particular, the first sunrise symbolizes that “no shadows will be present on what burns by itself.”
 Large rocks that stand out were also a subject of faith, where they were considered to be a place where a god dwelled. Especially when two rocks line up, they were considered to represent the heaven and earth or the positive and negative, called the “Couple Rocks” to represent happy marriage, well-being of family, and world peace, or sometimes considered to be Ebisu and Daikoku (two deities of good fortune), where people prayed for a good haul in fishing and safety on the ocean. Along with Couple Trees, etc., they are seen in various places of Japan, and there are also places named after these.

 The sun, the rocks, and the couple. Bungo Futamigaura offers all of the above. The junior high school nearby is called Shinonome (meaning the “dawn”), which is also neat. In addition, Kamiura Coast is a scenic spot also known as “Yabakei of the Ocean” with sights such as Gyouran no Taki Falls.

The Shimenawa rope and couple rocks appearing in the lights at night.