Virtual Old Kamakura 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #28 Sengen Shrine

 

     Daiun-ji Temple was founded by Priest Senyo in 1596.

     Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) invaded Korea in 1592 and in 1597.  In 1593, he got a son, and cornered his nephew, Hidetsugu (1568-1595), to commit suicide, and killed Hidetsugu’s children and wives in 1595; 29 of them!  It was one of those days the temple was founded.

     Daiun-ji was officially authorized as a Buddhist temple in 1649.

     Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-1651), the third shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, dissolved many clans to strengthen the power of the shogunate.  That increased the number of masterless samurais and destabilized the society.  To stabilize the society, he strengthened the danka system.  Every citizen was supposed to belong to a Buddhist temple.  That increased the number of temples and some masterless samurais became monks or priests.

     It was in one of those years that Daiun-ji Temple was authorized as a Buddhist temple.

     Daiun-ji Temple was quite new and organized artificially.  The precincts still has Koshin-do Shrine, which was based on the Koshin folk faith in Japan.      The faith is a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto.  It used to have an Avalokitesvara shrine, which was called Sengen-do, which might have had something to do with Sengen Shrine nearby.  The precincts also has a Ksitigarbha stone statue, which is believed to have been engraved by Kukai (774-835).

     The precincts of the temple and Sengen Shrine must have been a holy place for people living around them since earlier times.

Daiun-ji Temple

Address: 3 Chome−9−2 Harajuku, Totsuka, Yokohama, Kanagawa 245-0063

Phone: 045-851-6570