Virtual Yokohama City 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #13 Kofuku-ji Temple

     Kofuku-ji Temple used to be called Ungai-an Hermitage (literally Cloud Outside Hermitage), whose main deity was the guardian Buddha statue of Kamakura Kagemasa (1069-?).   It is unknown who founded Ungai-an Hermitage.  Someone built a hermitage someday.  What did he see “over the clouds” far beyond the sky?  By the end of the 16th century, it moved to the present place and became Kofuku-ji Temple.

     The Later Three-Year War was fought in the northeastern part of Japan in the late 1080s.  It was a kind of internal strife within the Kiyohara Clan.  First, Kiyohara Iehira (?-1087) and Kiyohira (1056-1128) fought against Sanehira (?-1083).  After Sanehira’s death, Iehira clashed against Kiyohira.  From the central government, Minamoto Yoshiie (1039-1106) intervened in the conflict.  The intervention brought the victory to Kiyohira.  In the war, Kamakura Kagemasa fought for Yoshiie brilliantly at the age of 16.  In a battle, Chokai Yosaburo shot Kagemasa’s right eye.  Not wavering, Kagemasa shot Yosaburo back dead.  In Yoshiie’s camp, Kagemasa was suffering with the arrow in his right eye.  His comrade, Miura Tametsugu, ran up to Kagemasa and stepped on his face to pull out the arrow.  Kagemasa got furious and slashed at Tametsugu, saying, “A samurai would be satisfied if he died with arrow wound.  But it’s humiliation to be stepped on the face.” Later, he developed Oba Manor in Koza County, Sagami Province.  He had the 10-centimeter-tall statue of Bhaisajyaguru, who is the Buddha of healing and medicine.  He might have suffered from the wound even after the war.

     Somehow or other, the statue moved a little eastward.  Someone built a hermitage someday, and kept the Bhaisajyaguru statue in it.

     After Kagemasa, Kagetsugu ruled Oba Manor, and called himself Oba Kagetsugu.  2 generations later, Oba Kageyoshi (1128-1210) joined in the military campaign when Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199) raised an army against the Taira Clan in 1180.  After the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate, however, he was disgraced in 1193.  His son, Kagekane went missing in 1213 during the military power games between the Hojo and the Wada Families, who had joined in Yoritomo’s military campaign.

     Kagemasa’s cousin, Kamakura Kagehisa, lived in Kajiwara, Kamakura, and called himself Kajiwara Kagehisa.  Kajiwara Kagetoki (1140-1200) suppressed Yoritomo’s first military campaign in 1180, defeating Yoritomo’s army in the Battle of Ishibashiyama on September 14.  On 24, Yoritomo hid himself in the Shitodo Cave.  Kagetoki found him, but let him go out of pity.  Kindness is, and was, never lost.   Yoritomo established the Kamakura Shogunate in the late 1180’s, and appointed Kagetoki to a position of trust.  After Yoritomo’s death, Kagetoki lost in power struggles.  He and his 7 sons were killed in a battle, and 33 heads of his family and relatives were exposed on the street.

     It is unknown who had inherited Kagemasa’s Bhaisajyaguru statue, but somebody too-young-to-kill might have been confined in a hermitage near Kamakura with the statue.  It is also unknown if Bhaisajyaguru could cure the survivor’s trauma, but, thanks to Kagemasa’s anecdote, the villagers believed the statue would answer to prayers for eye problems.

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