AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Gorōmaru Itabi (五郎丸の板碑) is a slender medieval Buddhist stone stela standing beside a local road in the Ishida hamlet of Chitose-machi, in the hills of Bungoono City, Oita. Designated as a city tangible cultural property, it is a quiet, scholarly kind of heritage stop rather than a sightseeing attraction: a carved memorial slab over five centuries old, set against a green valley backdrop where the old routes of the Chitose uplands still run.↗↗
Its interest lies in what the stone records. Cut in 1493 (Meiō 2), the itabi carries at its top the Sanskrit seed syllables of the Five Wisdom Buddhas arranged around Dainichi Nyorai (the cosmic Buddha Vairocana), and an inscription identifies it as a gyakushu tower—a memorial raised by a person in their own lifetime to secure merit for the afterlife. Standing on the modern Oita countryside road, it is a direct link to the faith and stone-carving craft of late-medieval Bungo province.↗↗
What the stone is
An itabi is a flat, tablet-like stone monument typical of medieval Japan, carved with Buddhist imagery and inscriptions and used for memorial and votive purposes. The Gorōmaru example follows that tradition closely. The upper face bears the seed syllables (bonji) of the Five Buddhas with Dainichi Nyorai at the center—the iconography of esoteric Shingon and Tendai devotion—while the inscription dates the work to Meiō 2 (1493). The same text establishes its purpose as a gyakushū memorial, a personal merit tower commissioned while the patron was still alive.
