Virtual Ueno Oji Komagome 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #21 Yoraku-ji Temple

      According to oral tradition, Kukai (774-835) carved a Ksitigarbha statue and founded Yoraku-ji Temple to enshrine the statue.

     Yoraku-ji Temple's another main deity is an Amitabha statue, which was said to be one of the 6 Amitabha statues which were carved by Gyoki (668-749).

     Fujiwara Masashige was a manager of the Adachi Manor.  He didn't have a child and prayed to Kumano God for one.  One night, he had a holy dream and had a girl, Adachihime.  She was married to Toshima Kiyomoto, who was the ruler of Toshima County.  Kiyomoto had 3 sons, Aritsune, Kiyoyasu, and Kiyoshige (1161-1238), who later called himself Kasai Kiyoshige and who became a samurai manager of Mutsu Province under the Kamakura Shogunate.

     Kiyoshige was given birth by Chichibu Shigehiro's daughter, but the mother(s) of Aritsune and Kiyoyasu was (were) not recorded.  Shigehiro seemed to be shrewd.  His sons started the Hatakeyama and Oyamada Families, and his daughter was married to Chiba Tsunetane (1118-1201).  The Hatakeyama, Oyamada, and Chiba Families were all important and significant samurai under the Kamakura Shogunate.

     Under such political situation, Adachihime's relationship with her parents-in-law, Yasuie and his wife, became strained.  It is unknown which of the Toshima and Chichibu Families (or both?) took the lead, but the Toshima Family dumped Adachihime, a daughter of their subordinate family, and replaced her with that of the powerful family.

     Adachihime threw herself into the Ara River on her way back to her parents' home with her maids.

Masashige had no guts to fight against his superior, became a monk, and visited sacred places in provinces.  When he visited Kumano, he had a holy dream and found a radiating tree.  He wrote his name on it and floated in the sea.  When he came back to Adachi, he found the tree washed ashore there.  He followed the holy dream and waited for Gyoki (668-749) to come.  Gyoki came and heard the whole story from Masashige.  Gyoki went on a fast, and carved 6 statues of Amitabha out of the tree and enshrined them in 6 villages nearby.  Yoraku-ji Temple had the 4th of the six.

     Wait, wait, wait!  Something is inconsistent.  How can Gyoki and others live in the same period?  Scientifically speaking, the statues are supposed to have been carved at the end of the 12th century, so Gyoki's part of the story was made up later in the latter half of the Edo Period, when Adachihime's story became popular.

     Anyway, no oral tradition talks about an Arya Avalokitesvara statue.  The precincts have a stone one which looks too new to be the #21 deity of the Ueno Oji Komagome 33 Kannon Pilgrimage, which was organized in 1771.   The precincts have a stone monument which tells that Yoraku-ji Temple was a copy of the Saigoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #21 Anao-ji Temple.

     The precincts also have a 4-faced stone monument with Indra carved in the East, Yama in the South, Varuna in the West, and Vaisravana in the North as guardian Buddhist images according to the dogma of esoteric Buddhism.  Although it is unreadable today, it was dated 1390 with the name of an imperial era name, Koo.  That means the area belonged to the Northern Court in the period of the Northern and Southern Courts (1336-1392).

     The tales of the Konjaku Monogatarishu or the Anthology of Tales from the Past were supposed to have been written down and compiled in the 1120's.  In one of its tales, Anao-ji Temple was mentioned.  According to the tale, its statue of Arya Avalokitesvara, who is the human-figure prototype of the other 6 metamorphoses, was ordered by the governor of Kuwada County in Tanba Province to a sculptor of Buddhist images in Kyoto.  The governor gave his favorite horse to the sculptor, but missed the horse so much that he ordered his vassal to shoot an arrow at the sculptor.  Later, however, the sculptor was found alive, and the arrow was found stuck at the chest of the Arya Avalokitesvara statue.

     An old guide book suggests that the Arya Avalokitesvara statue in Anao-ji Temple and the undetectable Arya Avalokitesvara statue in Yoraku-ji Temple were made in the same style or method.

Address: 1 Chome-25-1 Tabata, Kita City, Tokyo 114-0014

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