page_title: Tsuruoka
section_title: Yamabushi and Shugendô
hierarchical_section_title: Tsuruoka / Culture / The Mountain Spirit / Yamabushi and Shugendô
caption_attribution_description: English: Vegan Japanese food
context_page_description: Tsuruoka is a city in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. As of 31 January 2020, the city had an estimated population of 125,389 in 49,024 households, and a population density of 95.74 persons per km². The total area of the city is 1,311.53 square kilometres. Tsuruoka is the biggest city in Tōhoku region in terms of surface area.
  Today's Tsuruoka is the result of the fusion of several neighborhoods around the center of the city such as Atsumi, Asahi, Fujishima, Kushibiki, and Haguro in 1953.
context_section_description: Those three mounts are considered as the core of Shugendô's practice. Shugendô 修験道(literally: The way of the ascetic practice) is often perceived as a form of syncretism of Shintô 神道,religion and Buddhism. The Yamabushi 山伏, literally : "the men who sleep in the Mountain" (men who practice shugendô) believe in Buddha but also believe that a god resides in all things that exist in nature. Yamabushi, those men who wear a checked vest and blow in a trumpet shell to communicate with their peers and to keep the bad spirits away, aim to protect the mountain and to live a sinless life connected to the nature.
  The pilgrimage of all the three mounts is done in that sense. The three mounts symbolically represent death and rebirth. By going down and up the 2466 stone stairs of the mount Haguro, people can experiment a "symbolic death" and "rebirth", after which they can access to the world of the dead represented by Mt. Gassan and its foggy landscapes, and then go purify their body and their soul in Mt. Yudono's natural hotsprings. 
  Shôjin ryôri 精進料理 ("food for spiritual elevation"), a vegan food traditionally consumed by Yamabushi, uses no animal product but sansai 山菜 ("Mountain vegetables") instead, as well as local rice, handmade gomadôfu ごま豆腐 (sesame-flavoured tôfu), bamboo sprouts, vinegared chrysanthemum flowers and mushrooms. There exists a lot of different shôjin ryôri depending on the shukubô 宿坊 (temples that also welcome travellers for the night) that serves it, but it usually consists in a lot of small dishes accompanied with a miso soup and white rice.
caption: Shôjin ryôri at Saikan (Mt. Haguro)
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