Virtual Musashi 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #7 Mitsugon-in Temple

 

     It is unknown when Mitsugon-in Temple, which enshrines an Arya Avalokitesvara statue that was said to have been carved by Gyoki (668-749), was founded.

     The precincts have the graves of the descendants of Kamakura Kagemasa (1069-?), who fought under Minamoto Yoshiie (1039-1106), a legendary founder of the Minamoto Clan, in the Later Three-Year War in Mutsu Province.  The precincts could have been a holy place in the Kamakura Period (1180-1333).

     In 1601, Ina Tadaharu (1606-1653) ordered Mitsugon-in Temple to pray for the success of developing rice fields in the area.  To save Edo from floods, Tadaharu first stopped at Aino River, a bypass of the Old Tone River.  In 1621, he finished digging a canal to make the Old Tone River flow into the Watarase River, and started separating the Kinu and Kobai Rivers.  In 1629, he made the Ara River flow into the Iruma River, and the New Kinu River started running.  In 1630, the New Kobai River started running.  In 1635, he started building the Edo River and finished it in 1641.  Do you follow what I have said?  I wonder how many people understood his ultimate end.  Finally in 1654, 1 year after his death, the Tone river ran east directly to the Pacific Ocean.  As the construction progressed, he developed rice fields in the estuary of the Ara, Old Tone, and Old Watarase Rivers.

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