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Officially, Oki is divided into four kori or counties. Chiburi and Nishinoshima together form Chiburigori; Nakanoshima, with an islet, makes Amagori, and Dogo is divided into Ochigori and Sukigori. All these islands are very mountainous, and only a small portion of their area has ever been cultivated.
And it is alleged that whoever eats with chopsticks made from the wood of that tree will never have the toothache, and will live to become exceedingly old. The shrine dedicated to the spirit of the Emperor Go-Daigo is in Nishinoshima, at Beppu, a picturesque fishing village composed of one long street of thatched cottages fringing a bay at the foot of a demilune of hills.
We made for it immediately after leaving Urago; passing to the open through a narrow and fantastic strait between Nakanoshima and Nishinoshima, where the cliffs take the form of enormous fortifications bastions and ramparts, rising by tiers.
Nishinoshima possesses at Beppu a shrine in memory of the exiled Emperor Go-Daigo, and on the summit of Takuhizan that shrine of Gongen-Sama, from the place of which a wonderful view of the whole archipelago is said to be obtainable on cloudless days.
And the last promontory of Nishinoshima, which we pass to port, a huge red naked rock, turns to the horizon a point so strangely shaped that it has been called by a name signifying 'The Hat of the Shinto Priest. As we glide out into the swell of the sea other extraordinary shapes appear, rising from great depths.
And perhaps something of no small value might be written upon the question whether the highest charm of human life and work is not also irregularity. From Chiburimura we made steam west for the port of Urago, which is in the island of Nishinoshima. As we approached it Takuhizan came into imposing view.
And a cloud it proved; but slowly, beneath it, blue filmy shapes began to define against the whiteness, and sharpened into a chain of mountains. They grew taller and bluer a little sierra, with one paler shape towering in the middle to thrice the height of the rest, and filleted with cloud Takuhizan, the sacred mountain of Oki, in the island Nishinoshima.
Though Chiburishima has no kembutsu, her poor little village of Chiburi the same Chiburimura at which the Oki steamer always touches on her way to Saigo is the scene of perhaps the most interesting of all the traditions of the archipelago. Five hundred and sixty years ago, the exiled Emperor Go-Daigo managed to escape from the observation of his guards, and to flee from Nishinoshima to Chiburi.
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