Virtual Old Awa 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #19 Fumon-ji Temple

     Tradition has it that Gyoki (668-749) carved an Arya Avalokitesvar statue in 747 and put it in a hermitage in a mountain, which later became Fumon-ji Temple.  It used to be called the Rock Face  Avalokitesvar.  The temple was moved to the present place in 1844, and the statue was further moved to Shomon-ji Temple in 1917.

     Shomon-ji Temple was founded by Sanada Gengo (?-?), who fought for the Ashikaga Shogunate in the Yuki War in 1440.  Who fought agains who in the Yuki War?

     Ashikaga Harutora was born on June 13, 1394.  At the age of 9, he entered Seiren-in Temple, on June 21, 1403.  On March 4, 1408, he became a priest, and was named Gien.  Ashikaga Yoshikazu (1407-1425) and Yoshimochi (1386-1428) died of a disease one after another, and the shogunate became vacant.  Chief vassals assembled at Iwashimizu-Hachiman-gu Shrine and decided the next shogun by lot on January 17, 1428.  And Gien became the sixth shogun, Yoshinori (1394-1441), who assassinated his political opponents one after another.

     Ashikaga Mochiuji (1398-1439), the deputy shogun in Kamakura, was forced to commit suicide by Yoshinori, the then shogun.  Yuki Ujitomo (1402-1441) sheltered Mochiuji’s 2 sons, Shuno-maru and Yasuo-maru, in his castle, and rebelled against Yoshinori in 1440.  That was the Yuki War.

     On April 16, 1441, Ujitomo's castle fell and he and his eldest son were killed in the fights.  Shuno-maru and Yasuo-maru were arrested and were to be transferred to Kyoto.  But on their way, at Tarui, Mino Province, they were killed, with their death poems left:

“Summer weeds,

Their flowers blooming in Aono Field

Who knows their future?” (Shuno-maru)

“Who knows the future?

Our lives are to be limited today

Here away from home.” (Yasuo-maru)

     Anyway, Sanada Gengo jumped on the band wagon from Sanada County, Shinano Province.  His family settled in the Mihara area, ruled the territory, and made Shibun-ji Temple their family temple.

     The precincts of Shibun-ji Temple had been a holy place for a long time.  It is said that a certain people had moved from the Miura Peninsula in the 12th century with their ritual of bone collecting.  In the back of the temple, there still lies the Cave of the Ancestors, which had been turned into the cave grave for the ancestors of the Sanada Family.

     The tradition of the temple says that Masaki Yoritada (1551-1622) turned the temple into the family temple of the Masaki Family in 1574 to pray for the comfort of his lamented father in the other world.  But it’s impossible.  Yoritada’s father, Tokitada (1521-1576), tried to get independent from the Satomi Clan, and sent his second son, Yoritada, to the Hojo Clan as a hostage.  In 1575, the eldest son, Tokimichi, died.  In 1576, Tokitada also died, and Yoritada was sent back to Awa Province by 1577.  So, if it was in 1574 that the conversion was carried out, it must have been either Tokitada or Tokimichi who did it.  If it was Yoritada who turned Shibun-ji into their family temple, he must have done so after 1577, unless Yoritada and the Hojo Clan predicted (or planned?) the sudden death of the two. 

Address: 270 Wadacho Nakamihara, Minamiboso, Chiba 299-2716

Phone: 0470-47-3728