Virtual Gyotoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #25 Genshin-ji Temple

     At the beginning of the 16th century, fur before the Takagi Family advanced to Gyotoku and about a decade before Kinkai arrived at Gyotoku, someone built Anraku-in Hermitage to enshrine an Acalanatha statue.

   The Later Hojo Clan organized their vassals in a hierarchical structure: the top 7 families, 4 second families, 20 third families, and so on.

Ise Shinkuro (1456-1519) came from Kyoto to Suruga Province to make a Warring-States-Period hero.  In 1493, he invaded Izu Province and made it his own territory, and got independent from the Imagawa Clan in Suruga Province.  Before his invasion of Izu Province, Shinkuro had organized 7 families as his vassals.  4 other families followed the invasion, and 20 families in Izu Province followed him in the progress of the invasion.  The Kano Family was one of the 20.

     Kano Yasumitsu (?-1590) first worked and fought for Hojo Ujiyasu (1515-1571).  In 1560's, he was assigned to Hachioji Castle to work and fight for Ujiyasu's 3rd son, Ujiteru (1542-1590).  In 1582, he stayed in Fukaya Castle, the front line against Takigawa Kazumasu (1525-1586), a vassal of Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582).  When Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) attacked the Later Hojo Clan, Maeda Toshiie (1538-1599) and Uesugi Kagekatsu (1555-1623) seized Hachioji Castle.  Yasumitsu defended the castle and was either killed in battle or killed himself.  Yugi Toshishige (?-1590) was also killed in battle there.

     About 2 decades after the death of Yasumitasu and Toshishige, Yasumitsu's son, Shin'emon (?-1629) and Toshishige's son, Priest Jisho (1544-1620), jointly changed Anraku-in to Genshin-ji Temple in 1611.

     In 1620, Shin'emon worked together with Tanaka Takumi to build an irrigation canal from Okashiwa River through Gyotoku to Todai-jma for 15 kilometers.  The canal was called either Takumi-hori, after Tanaka Takumi, or Joten-hori, after Shin'emon's posthumous Buddhist name.

     Shin'emon's daughter, whose posthumous Buddhist name was Jushin, built a grave for Shin'emon and his wife in Genshin-ji Temple, and she also built 5 Ksitigarbha stone statues.  One of the 5 was to pray for the comfort of late Shin'emon in the other world and another was to pray for the comfort of herself in the other world.  It was built when she was still alive.

     Shin'emon cultivated barrens and developed fields and paddy fields.  That somewhat contradicted the Tokugawa Shogunate's protectionism over the salt industry in Gyotoku.  He was a genuine negotiator.  He made good use of Jisho's priesthood in Zojo-ji Temple, the Tokugawa Clan's family temple.  The canal had another problem.  For people around its outlet, the canal was just needless.  Shin'emon designed the canal to be used as waterway between the developed land and its outlet.  The people around the outlet benefitted from the water transport of salt and rice.  Takumi was also genius.  He designed the canal to run roughly from northeast to southwest through Gyotoku so as that its upper stream should work for irrigation, and its lower stream could function as a stopper of fresh water running into salt pans which laid in the southeastern part of Gyotoku.  As Gyotoku's tidal flats expanded southeastward, some salt pans became useless after years.  Then, the canal worked to drain salt from the used salt pans.

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