Virtual Old Awa 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #24 Enmei-ji Temple

 

     Enmei-ji Temple was founded by Satomi Sanetaka (1484-1533) in 1510.  He invited Priest Bontei (?-1558), who was from Kozuke Province.  The hill at the back of the temple has the graves of Satomi Sanetaka, Yoshitaka (1507-1574), and Yoshihiro (1530-1578), whose romance with Priestess Shogaku is famous.

      When the Satomi Clan was building up its hegemony in Awa Province, the Kanto region at large was plunging into another epoch under the Muromachi Shogunate.  Kanto Deputy Shogun used to be based at Kamakura.  The fourth Kanto Deputy Shogun, Ashikaga Mochiuji (1398-1439), turned against the central shogunate in Kyoto in 1423.  He was defeated, and his son, Shigeuji (1434-1497), got based at Koga in Shimousa Province.  The central shogunate sent Ashikaga Masatomo (1435-1491) to Kanto, appointing him as a new deputy shogun in Kanto, but he couldn’t enter Kamakura, obstructed by some powerful Kanto samurais, and got based at Horigoe in Izu Province.  That is, the Kanto deputy shogunate was divided into 2.

     In 1517, when Ashikaga Takamoto (?-1535) was Koga Kanto Deputy Shogun, his younger brother, Yoshiaki(1493?-1538), turned against Takamoto, and got based at Oyumi in Shimousa Province.  That is, the Kanto deputy shogunate got divided into 3.  Meanwhile, the Uesugi Clan, which was hereditary for the butler-ship of the Kanto Deputy Shogun, was keeping its own authority.  In short, Kanto got into a mess.  And, to make the matters worse, Ise Shinkuro (1432-1519) came from Kyoto to make a warring-states-period hero, and joined in the mess.

      In 1523, Ise Ujitsuna (1487-1541), the son of Shinkuro, changed his surname to Hojo (known as Later Hojo).  In 1532, as Ujitsuna was joining forces with Ashikaga Takamoto, Kanto Deputy Shogun in Koga, Ashikaga Yoshiaki, Kanto Deputy Shogun in Oyumi, was becoming the only choice for Satomi Yoshitoyo (?-1534) to face the Later Hojo Clan together.  In 1534, however, or as a result, Satomi Yoshitaka (1507?-1574), Yoshitoyo’s cousin, launched coup d’etat against Yoshitoyo with the help of Ujitsuna.

     However, Yoshitaka was always under the pressure of Oyumi Kanto Deputy Shogun, and went over to Yoshiaki’s side.  In 1538, Oyumi and Koga Kanto Deputy Shoguns clashed against each other in Konodai.  Yoshiaki was killed in the battle, and Koga’s side won.  The biggest winner in the battle was Hojo Ujitsuna.  He made Takamoto his puppet, and grabbed the hegemony over all the southern part of Kanto but Awa Province.  The minor second winner of the battle was, ironically enough, Yoshitaka, who belonged to the loser’s side.  He could secure Awa Province at least, and could get rid of Oyumi Kanto Deputy Shogun, who had been a pain in the neck.  In the aftermath of the battle, the Later Hojo Clan and the Satomi Clan were to fight against each other head-to-head.

     After Ashikaga Yoshiaki and his first son, Yoshizumi (?-1538), were killed in the battle, his younger children flew to Awa Province, counting on the protection of Satomi Yoshitaka.  It was during those days that Yoshitaka’s first son, Yoshihiro (1530-1578), and Ashikaga Yoshiaki’s first daughter met.  Later, however, Yoshiaki's second and third sons were sent to Sekido-ji Temple in Kazusa Province and his 3 daughters were sent to Taihei-ji Temple in Kamakura.  It means they became under the patronage, or the supervision, of the Later Hojo Clan.

     At the age of 8 or 9, Satomi Yoshihiro was determined.

     After coming of age, Yoshihiro kept fighting fiercely and aggressively against the Later Hojo Clan.  He continued fighting for some 18 years.  Finally, in 1556, he succeeded in intruding into Kamakura temporarily.  He saw Ashikaga Yoshiaki’s first daughter, who was Nun Shogaku (?-1576?) at the time.  She had been determined too.  With her noble bloodline as a young lady of the Ashikaga Clan, the shogunate clan, she could have got married with a son of a powerful family as her younger sister did.  The younger sister got married to Uesugi Norihiro (?-1551), the Butler or Regent of Kanto Deputy Shogun.  Instead, Shogaku turned a nun in Taihei-ji Temple, and had waited for nearly 2 decades.  Yoshihiro was 26 years old.  She might have been older than him.  Yoshihiro asked Nun Shogaku to come back to Awa Province, and she accepted his proposal.  Hojo Ujiyasu (1515-1571), the then head of the Later Hojo Clan, criticized their attempt “incomprehensible” but all he could do was to destroy Taihei-ji Temple.

     Yoshihiro married her as his lawful wife.  You might wonder why his samurais supported his romantic but rather selfish motivation.  He realized the largest territory for them.  Not bad in the Warring States Period.

     Some Yoshihiro’s samurais had their own motivation to advance to Kamakura at the groin of the Miura Peninsula.  By that time Ashikaga Yoshiaki was killed, the Hojo Clan had destroyed the Miura Clan, and organized their own sea forces.  Some of the Miura Sea Forces fled to Awa Province, and got hired by the Satomi Clan’s vassals, such as Masaki Michitsuna (1492?-1533).  Or Michitsuna himself might have been a surviving retainer of Miura’s.  Anyway, from that time on, the Izu Sea Forces of the Hojo Clan and the Satomi Sea Forces were to face each other head-to-head across the Edo and Sagami Bays.  

It was the Satomi Sea Forces that occupied Jogashima Island at the tip of the Miura Peninsula to make it an advanced base to intrude into Kamakura by sea.  They also let Nun Shogaku sail across the Uraga Channel to Awa Province safely.  Seeing their spectacular performance, all Hojo Ujiyasu could do was complaining and destroying a temple in his own territory for revenge.

     For the descendants of the Miura Sea Forces, fighting back into the Miura Peninsula was not just homesickness.  They showed that they were the most powerful sea forces in Kanto.

     Later, however, presumably after her death, Yoshihiro accepted  a peace treaty with the Later Hojo Clan.  He had lost his fierce and aggressive motivation to fight against the Later Hojo Clan.  Hojo Ujiyasu also might have found the treaty comprehensible.

     Enmei-ji Temple has itabi in its precincts.

     Itabi is a type of a stone monument or a Japanese pagoda.  It has the flattened-shape body with a flat triangular-or-pyramidal-shape top, and is supposed to have been used as a stone grave monument, a pagoda, or a stupa for remembrance.  The pagoda body can include images (tengai decoration, flower vases, censer, candlestick), sanskrit characters in a circle above a lotus decoration, poetic and religious texts, the commemoration date, zodiac signs and information about the builder and the reason for the creation of the itabi.  The itabi is placed directly in the ground or on a platform.

     Itabi were used in medieval Buddhism from the Kamakura Period (1185-1333) to the early Edo Period (1603-1868), or from the early 13th century to the 17th century.  There are many itabi in the Kanto region, and they spread to other parts of Japan as the Kanto samurais were dispatched to those places to strengthen the power of the Kamakura Shogunate.

     The itabi in Enmei-ji Temple is 126 centimeters tall and 32 centimeters wide.  The top has the tengai decoration with the Sanskrit letters Hilih, Sa, and Sah, which imply Amitabha, Arya Avalokitesvara, and Mahasthamaprapta respectively.  It is made of green schist, and is the southernmost green-schist one in the Boso Peninsula.  As that type of itabi were popular in Musashi Province, some samurais might have made their way to Awa Province from there. 

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