Virtual Aduma 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #29 Zen'yo-ji Temple

     It is unknown when Zen'yo-ji Temple was founded.

     Saiokuken Socho (1448—1532) was a renga poet.  Renga was linked-verse poetry composed in succession by participants gathered together, and accordingly functioned as an information exchange meeting.  Socho was a diplomacy consultant of Imagawa Ujichika (1471-1526), the lord of Suruga and Totomi Provinces.

     In 1509, Socho made a trip to visit the Ancient Shirakawa Barrier.

     The Shirakawa Barrier is one of the three major barriers built to mark the border between the territory controlled by the Japanese Imperial Court and the northern foreign tribes in the Tohoku Region, and may date back to as early as the latter half of the 5th century. The barrier served as a border fortress against excursions of the northern foreigners to the south, and to regulate and control traffic from "Japan" to the north. The Imperial forces gradually conquered the northern foreigners, and the barrier became ruin. The memory of the barrier was preserved in Japanese tanka poetry to stir images of distance, transition, and sometimes even loneliness.

     Utsunomiya Shigetsuna (1468-1516) was a hegemon in the northern half of the Kanto Region.  By the year 1509, Ise Shinkuro (?-1519) had invaded Izu Province and most part of Sagami Province, and became independent from the Imagawa Clan.  Socho might have had a secret mission from Ujichika.  Actually, he met Mibu Tsunashige (1448-1516), a vassal of Shigetsuna, on his way to the barrier and held a renga poetry party in his residence.  Although it wasn't recorded if Shigetsuna himself attended the party, visiting the Shirakawa Barrier could have been a good excuse to make a trip to the northern end of the Kanto Region through Sagami, Musashi, and Shimousa Provinces.  Anyway, Socho kept a diary during the trip and mentioned Zenryo-ji Temple in an entry.

     Daigo-ji Temple in Kyoto used to have an Acalanatha statue which was said to have been carved by Visvakarman, who was an imaginary craftsman deity in India.  Anyway, the statue was believed to have come from India via China.  Priest Raicho in the temple believed in Acalanatha, who told him in his dream to bring the statue to one of eastern provinces to quiet fightings.  He traveled east with the statue on his back and enshrined it in Koiwa Village.  After years, his apprentice, Ken'yu, revived Zen'yo-ji Temple and built a hermitage in its precincts to enshrine the statue in 1527.

     The precincts had 2 big pine trees: one standing straight vertically and the other spreading horizontally.  One night, a star fell on the standing tree, and became a stone, which is preserved in the temple.  Since then, the pine tree came to be called Hoshifuri-matsu, namely Star-Fell Pine Tree.  The spreading tree was named Yogo-no-matsu.  When Omachi Keigetsu (1869-1925) visited the temple, he wrote a travel essay and praised the 2 trees as the best pine trees in Tokyo in 1906.  The standing tree, however, died in 1940.

Address: 2 Chome-24-2 Higashikoiwa, Edogawa City, Tokyo 133-0052

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