Virtual Yokohama City 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #22 Konzo-in Temple

     The history of Konzo-in Temple is full of mysteries.

     When Hojo Yasutoki (1183-1242), the third regent of the Kamakura Shogunate, studied Buddhism under Priest Myoe (1173-1232) in Kyoto, he received the Bhaisajyaguru statue, which had been carved by Kaikei (1150-1250).  He built Ryushaku-ji Temple in Okamura Village near Kamakura.  Yasutoki asked Kaikei to carve the statue of Cintamanicakra, who usually has 6 arms and holds chintamani (a wish-fulfilling jewel) in one of the six.  Legend has it that Yasutoki was worried about his wife’s infertility.  However, Yasutoki got married with his first wife in 1202, and she gave birth to his first son, Tokiuji (1203-1230), the third regent of the Kamakura Shogunate, next year.  They got divorced, but Yasutoki got remarried with the second wife and got the second son, Tokimi (1212-1227).  She gave birth to 2 sons and 3 daughters in total at least.  Did his first wife become sterile after the first birth?  She got remarried to Sahara Moritsura (?-1233), and gave birth to 3 sons.  It’s a mystery what Yasutoki was actually worried about.  Cintamanicakra is believed to fulfill your wish, especially the wish to success.

     Anyway, he got the Cintamanicakra statue and built a Kannon hall in Yamadaya village.  Later, the statue became the guardian Buddha of his wife.  It is unknown which wife’s.

     The first wife's second husband, Moritsura, deserted from the front line in the face of the enemy in 1221.  In 1226, he got drunk in Kyoto and inflicted bodily injury on someone in Uji.  After the case, he became jobless, was banished from Kyoto, and roamed around provinces for years.  On June 18, 1230, her first son, Tokiuji, died of an illness.  On May 22, 1233, Moritsuna tried forcibly to intrude into Kyoto, only to be killed upon the spot.  Was it the first wife that needed Cintamanicakra?

     The second wife’s first son, Tokimi, was killed by his subject, Takahashi Jiro, on June 18, 1227, just 3 years before Tokiuji’s death.  In July in the same year, her first daughter gave birth to a baby, who died after some 10 days.  And the daughter herself died on August 4 at the age of 25.  After she gave birth to her second son, Kimiyoshi in 1241, Yasutoki died 1242.  Was it the second wife that needed Cintamanicakra?

     When Ryushaku-ji Temple was burned down in 1326, the Bhaisajyaguru statue narrowly escaped from the fire.  At the time, Priest Riku was living in Konzo-in Hermitage.  In 1328, he invited the statue to the hermitage, and named hermitage Gansho-ji.  In 1333, the Hojo Clan was wiped out, and the temple gradually went to ruin, losing a big supporter.  At the end of Warring States Period, in 1576, Priest Reigen rebuilt the temple.  During the Tokugawa Era, the temple doubled as the shrine temple of Shaguchi Shrine.

The belief in Shaguchi is distributed in the Eastern provinces and dates back to the Jomon Period, a kind of the Neolithic Age in Japan.  Shaguchi drops in at stones and trees.  Those types of stones and trees can be found in Shaguchi Shrines today as well as in the Jomon Period sites.

     In some Shaguchi Shrines, a Shinto priest is possessed by Shaguchi, and gives out an oracle.

     All in all, Konzo-in Temple is mysterious. 

Address: 4 Chome-3-6 Isogo, Isogo Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa 235-0016Phone: 045-752-1741