Virtual Yamanote 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #8 Yokoku-ji Temple

     Matsudaira Tadatoshi (1582-1632) had a daughter whose name or mother was unrecorded.  She was married to the Oka Family and gave birth to Tadafusa (?-1726).  She and Tadatoshi invited Priest Gentei and supported the foundation of Yokoku-ji Temple in 1624.  Presumably, her mother died in the year or in the previous year.  A stone statue of Arya Avalokitesvara, who is the human-figure prototype of the other 6 metamorphoses, was built in 1671.  Presumably, she died in the year or in the previous year.  However nameless she and her mother might have been, they came from the Matsudaira Family, who were related to a branch family of the Tokugawa Clan, and were important for such a lower-ranking samurai as the Oka Family, who were basically post-less and thus jobless, and whose salary was paid by rice.  Post-less subjects of the Tokugawa Shogunate were so poor that many of them moonlighted to cover living expenses.  In Okinagusa, a collection of essays compiled from 1772 to 1791 and published in 1851, Kanzawa Toko (1710-1795) depicted post-less samurai as being "paid" masterless samurai.  Some even practically sold their samurai ranks by adopting tradesmen.

     In 1735, the influence of lineage became extinct and the Oka Family died out.  The temple buildings burned down in 1879.

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