A volcanic gorge beside the Daiya river with twenty stone Jizo figures lined up beneath the cedars; free access.
Kanman-ga-Fuchi is a small volcanic gorge carved by the Daiya river into the basalt rock of Mount Nantai's lava, a fifteen-minute walk from central Nikko in the opposite direction from the Toshogu shrine. The name means "the abyss of the river god", and a natural fissure in the riverbed rock was identified for centuries as the dwelling of a water deity. Along the path that follows the river through the gorge stand more than twenty stone figures of Jizo Bosatsu — the bodhisattva who protects children and travellers — between 80 centimetres and a metre tall, covered in moss, with little red cloth caps and most of them headless (decapitated by the river's floods over the centuries). Legend says their heads mysteriously reappear and that anyone who tries to count them always gets a different number, hence their popular nickname "Hyakuji Jizo" (the hundred Jizo that cannot be counted). The path among the cedars, the moss and the Jizo has a stillness and a melancholy beauty entirely different from the golden splendour of the Toshogu. Access is completely free.
