Virtual Kozukue 33 Kannon Pilgrimage in Yokohama #23 Tokuon-ji Temple

     Enmei-in Temple, no more than a hermitage, was built by the end of the 10th century.

     In the middle of the century, the alien captives in Dewa Province revolted.  Who were alien captives?  In the 8th century, the Japanese central government kept occupying the north-eastern region of Honshu Island.  In the process of the seizure, many aliens either surrendered or were captured.  They and their descendants were exempted from taxes and given some food.  Instead of growing rice as tax, they provided local specialties and their skills as hunting people.

     In the middle of the century, Taira Masakado (?-940) rebelled against the central government and even tried to establish an independent country in the Kanto Region.

     Those 2 rebellions were the buds of the birth of samurai.

     In the upheaval, someone might have been confined in a hermitage to survive.  The temple’s name, Enmei, literally means to prolong life.  At the end of his confined life, what did he see as a Buddhist?

     In 1355, Priest Tokai (?-1373) turned the hermitage into a temple, and named it Tokuon-ji.

     In the latter half of the 17th century, Yanagisawa Nobutada (1659-1724) piously supported the temple.  His wife also presented her guardian Sarasvati statue to the temple and built a shrine for the statue.  The shrine also keeps an Arya Avalokitesvara statue in it.

     Nobutada successfully moved up, and became the chief religion investigator of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1707.

     In 1709, Giovanni Battista Sidotti (1668–1714) infiltrated into Japan.  He was an Italian Christian priest.  He was arrested, and was confined until his death in Edo.  He was investigated by Nobutada and Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725), who later published the Seiyo Kibun based on the conversations with him.  Sidotti died from debility in an underground cell at the age of 46.  As a Christian, what did he see at the end of his confined life?

     Five years after Sidotti’s death, Nobutada received the Joseon Mission to Japan in 1719.

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