Virtual Musashi 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #16 Ampuku-ji Temple

     It is unknown when Ampuku-ji Temple was founded, but a land register of Iizuka Village in July, 1622, listed the temple.  It was no more than a hermitage, but Priest Ryuen (?-1688) changed it to a real temple.

    In 1668, Sekiguchi Jizaemon, the head of Iizuka Village, and Kihe, a farmer, dug out a bronze "kakebotoke" at the root of a row of pine trees.  They built a hermitage and enshrined the "kakebotoke" Avalokitesvara image in it.  They also invited Priest Shasei of Ampuku-ji Temple and held a Buddhist service to exhibit the image in 1700.

     The image came to be called Yugao Avalokitesvara for some reason and became very popular among Edo citizens.  The hermitage was even listed in Edo Meisho Zue or "the Guide to Famous Edo Sites", which was written and compiled by the 3 generations of Saito Choshu (1737-1799), Kansai (1772-1818), and Gesshin (1804-1878), and was published from 1834 to 1836.  Its whole volumes were illustrated by Hasegawa Settan (1778-1843).

     A kakebotoke was a Buddhist image on the top of a mirror.  In Shinto, a native Japanese religion, a mirror was an object of worship.  Under the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism, we started engraving a petroglyph of a Buddhist image on a bronze mirror in the 10th century.  Later, those images became gorgeous and three-dimensional.  They were made till the end of the Edo Period, but many of them were discarded after the Gods and Buddhas Separation Order was issued by the Meiji Restoration Government in 1868.

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