Negishi station (根岸駅 Negishi eki) is located in the town of Aizu-Misato.
Kōan temple (弘安寺 Kōan-ji) which has the statue of Jūichimen Kannon Bosatsu (十一面観音菩薩), (the eleven-faced Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva), is near the station.
They say the temple was build in 1279.
The statue of the Kannon Bosatsu is familiarly known as Nakada Kannon (中田観音).
Kōan temple is known for the connection with Hideyo Noguchi (野口英世) who was a world-famous doctor and bacteriologist and is the person drawn on the current 1,000 yen note.
They say his mother believed deeply in the Kannon and had come there to pray for him every month.
He was born in Aizu, and after becoming a doctor, went to the United States and mainly studied bacteria.
After that, he went to South America and saved a lot of people from an infection.
In Ecuador, he became a design of a stamp.
Thereafter, He went to Africa for the study of yellow fever, but he himself died of yellow fever there.
Nakada Kannon is in the temple, but we can't usually see it because it is behind a curtain.
To see the statue, it is necessary to make a reservation by the day before.
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The statue of Nakada Kannon has two attendants, Jizō Bodhisattva (地蔵菩薩 Jizō bosatsu) and Acala (不動明王 Fudō myōō), and the combination seems to be a rare type.
In addition, the statue is designated as a national important cultural property.
By the way, Nakada Kannon is also called “Korori” (コロリ) Kannon.
“Korori” means to die without suffering.
A pillar called ”Dakitsuki-bashira (だきつき柱)” is in the temple.
People believe that if they pray while hugging the pillar, they can die peacefully.
I guess there weren’t so many people who could die easily in the old days either.
It was a simple desire but can be understood even present day.
I remember that when I was a child, I heard my neighbors talking about an older person who was farming as usual until the day before dying.
The people talking about the deceased looked sad but filled with some deep emotion.
I think that people will be happy if they can meet such a death, and a rural area where there are a lot of people who live such a life is ideal.
I wonder any overseas tourists won’t probably get off on the way for seeing the temple.
Anyway, there are a lot of other temples that have a statue of Kannon Bosatsu in Aizu, and I hear that a lot of people in the Edo period made a pilgrimage to the Kannon Bodhisattvas in thirty-three places, a tradition that originated in the Shikokureligion, west Japan.
You won’t be able to see those temples from the train window, but I hope you will appreciate that a lot of religious faiths took root in the land the train runs trough.