Virtual Quasi-Chichibu 34 Kannon Pilgrimage #19 Sennen-ji Temple

 

     The biography of Sennen-ji Temple says, “A stone flew from Mt. Fuji, and emitted beams night by night.  The villagers wondered about it, and visited Asama Shrine at the foot of Mt. Fuji.  They got an oracle that the stone had been presented by Kukai as a talisman, which flew to Ichiba Village.  'Enshrine it, and the visitors wishes will be fulfilled.’”

     The villagers built Fuji-Asama Shrine and enshrined the stone.  Each believer brought a stone, and the stones piled up as tall as 3 meters, and made a mimic Mt. Fuji.

     Which eruption was it?

     The biology continued, “The shrine got the religious faith of Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and received his contribution in 1644.”  The latest eruption of Mt. Fuji was in 1511, when the Battle of Funaokayama broke out.  The battle was fought between Hosokawa Takakuni (1484-1531), supported by Ouchi Yoshioki (1477-1529), and Hosokawa Sumimoto (1489-1520).  Takakuni and Yoshioki supported Ahikaga Yoshitane (1466-1523) as a shogun, while Sumimoto supported Ashikaga Yoshizumi (1481-1511).  After the Onin War (1467-1477), it is very difficult to tell who were fighting against who, and why.

     Let’s get back to Sennen-ji Temple.

     In the middle of the 17th century, Monk Shozei visited Ishiyama-dera Temple in Omi, and stayed there to pray to the Avalokitesvara statue there.  He found another smaller Avalokitesvara statue in it.  The inside statue was said to have carved by Jocho (?-1057), and had been a guardian Buddhist image of Murasaki Shikibu (978-1019).  How could it be?

     Anyway, the statue gave him an oracle to bring it to Edo, and they stayed with Yamaguchiya Heizaemon, whose daughter fell victim of an intractable disease.  The monk prayed to the statue, and she got over the disease.  The statue then appeared in the dream of Heizaemon and asked him to bring it to Asama Shrine at Ichiba Village, Kawasaki.  The monk built a hermitage in the precincts.

     When the head priest of Chion-in Temple in Kyoto visited Edo, he heard of the story, visited the hermitage, and turned it into a temple.

     According to another record, the temple was founded by Priest Kokan (?-1655).  Whichever you may believe, the temple seems to have been founded in the middle of the 17th century, presumably after the contribution of Iemitsu, as the shrine temple of Asama Shrine.

     The temple declined, but was revived by Morihime (1811-1846), who was the 18th daughter of Tokugawa Ienari (1773-1841), the 11th shogun, and who was the wife of Nabeshima Naomasa (1815-1871), the 10th lord of the Saga Domain, Kyushu.  He was progressive, and modernized his domain.  However, he was politically an opportunist.  That caused very few victims during the Meiji Restoration, and enabled the domain to provide many technocrats to the Meiji Government.

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