Virtual Quasi-Saigoku Inage 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #19 Shofuku-ji Temple

 

     Shofuku-ji Temple was founded by Priest Kaiga (?-1682) in the midst of the natural disasters and the social transformation.

     On April 13, 1677, the Enpo Hachinohe Earthquake, one of the seismicities of the Sanriku coast, broke out, causing a tsunami in the Tohoku Region.  5 months later, the Enpo Boso Earthquake hit the Kanto Region, causing a tsunami there, and killing more than 500 people.  In 1678, an earthquake broke out off Rikuzen Province.

     In 1680, Tokugawa Ietsuna (1641-1680), the 4th shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, died without his son.  His younger brother, Tsunayoshi (1646-1709), succeeded to the shogunate.  He changed the martial-law-like governance of the first 3 shoguns to the bureaucracy.  The martial-law-like governance had enabled the shogunate requisition some of the domains which were ruled by those out of the Tokugawa Clan, but , instead, made many samurais maste-less and thus  jobless.  Ietsuna stopped the governance but  at the cost of decreasing the shogunate reserve by 80 percent.  Tsunayoshi tried to promote bureaucratically competent samurai to reconstruct the finances, and to have the outsider feudal lords observe the Confucianism.

     The precincts has a handful of old itabi.  No inscription is readable.  The precincts might have been a holy place far before the foundation of the temple.

Address: 2 Chome-13-1 Kitamigata, Takatsu Ward, Kawasaki, Kanagawa 213-0005

Phone: 044-822-0518