Virtual Old Awa 33 Kannon Pilgrimage

      The anomalous cold weather started in 1229, resulting in a shortage of food. People started to die en masse in 1230.  About one third of the population of Japan were starved to death.  The relief efforts by the Kamakura Shogunate was ineffective.  The social order broke down, and bands of marauding robbers became common.  In stead of further relief efforts, the Shogunate tightened the reins of the society.  On August 27, 1232, they introduced the Goseibai Shikimoku or the Formulary of Adjudications.

     The famine deeply grieved priests and monks in Awa Province.  They composed tanka poems for their Avalokitesvara precincts and organized 33 Kannon pilgrimage in the province in 1232, when the Goseibai Shikimoku was imposed nationally.

http://awa-junrei.jp/