Virtual Miura 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #15 Shinpuku-ji Temple

 

     Shinpuku-ji Temple has 2 Avalokitesvara statues.  The Arya Avalokitesvara statue is not usually shown to the public and sealed in a sacred box.  In front of the box, there stands so-called the Blessed-Virgin-Mary Avalokitesvara statue.

     The Arya Avalokitesvara statue is the main deity of Shinpuku-ji Temple, which was founded in 1528 by Priest Seiko.  In the previous year, the Ashikaga Shogunate split, and Ashikaga Yoshitsuna (1509-1573) opened the Sakai Shogunate against Ashikaga Yoshiharu (1511-1550), whose side is sometimes called the Omi Shogunate as he often escaped from Kyoto and stayed in Omi Province.  And in 1528, the mother of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) was born.  Ieyasu later put the end to the Warring States Period and unified Japan.

     The temple building is the original one built in 1528.  No metal nails were used to build it, and, thus, it was a living witness of the start and the end of the Warring States Period.

     The Blessed-Virgin-Mary Avalokitesvara statue had been enshrined in a Kannon-do temple at Tanido, Nishi-Uraga.  The temple building fell down in 1914, and one of supporting member family of Shinpuku-ji Temple built a new building for the statue in the precincts of the temple.

     The edge of the train of the statue looks like a fish.  As Jesus was believed to mean a fish in the Hebrew language, the figure was sometimes employed by crypto-Christians.  However, it is unknown whether some crypto-Christians really inhabited in Todani or the figure was coincidently employed in a fishing village.

Address: 1-chome−4−48 Yoshii, Yokosuka,  Kanagawa 239-0804