Virtual Gyotoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #30 Kezo-in Temple

 

     Kezo-in Temple was founded in Nekozane Village by the middle of the 14th century, and was revived by Priest Ken'yu in 1577.  Presumably, it was revived as the salt industry in Gyotoku expanded under the rule of the Takagi Family.

     In the Western half of the Kanto Plain, Iruma, Ara, Tone, and Watarase Rivers ran south into the Edo Bay.  They sometimes met one another and sometimes branched off, forming a one big estuary at the northern end of the Edo Bay between Edo Castle in the west and Gyotoku in the east.  The rivers formed mudflats, which enabled locals to build salt pans relatively easily.  As the rivers brought more sand and mud, small islands grew bigger, and some mudflats eventually became dry lands.  By span of decades, once productive salt pans became useless and should have been transferred to rice fields.  Before the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the salt workers in Gyotoku might have moved south by generation, but after its establishment, its control over the population became severe and people were supposed to keep living in the same village.  Salt workers had to change their jobs.  As the shogunate had Tone and Watrase Rivers run eastward to the Pacific to save Edo from floods, it might affected the geographical transformation of the estuary, and, of course, the shogunate changed some flows of the rivers around Gyotoku artificially to control floods.

     As alluvium expanded southward, it became impossible to do saltworks in Nekozane village by 1629.  After the middle of the 17th century, its villagers came to depend on fishing.  The conflict over fishery with Horie and Funahashi Villages nearby became serious and severe.  The conflict caused the death of 3 villagers in the 1780's, and a stone monument was built in 1889 in the precincts of Kezo-in Temple to commemorate them.

Address: 3 Chome-10-3 Nekozane, Urayasu, Chiba 279-0004

Phone: 047-351-2332