Yamanote 33 Kannon Pilgrimage

      The Yamanote 33 Kannon Pilgrimage is the 6th oldest Kannon pilgrimage in Edo.  It was organized in 1733.  The 33 Kannon Pilgrimages in Edo can be classified into 2 types:  around-Edo-Castle type and area-limited type.  Among the 5 preceding pilgrimages, 3 were around-Edo-Castle type and area-limited type had 2, whose temples were all located in the east of Edo Castle.  The Yamanote 33 Kannon Pilgrimage was the first that organized temples in the west of the castle.

     I hope to find why the eastern pilgrimages presided and western ones followed. 

     According to a travelogue of Muraoka Karyo (1760-1841), the pilgrimage was a copy of the Bando 33 Kannon Pilgrimage.

     Muraoka Karyo (1760-1841) made one-day trips around Edo from 1807 to 1834, wrote 32 travel essays, and compiled them into a book, Edo Kinko Michishirube, namely the Edo Suburb Signposts.  He was a vassal of the Shimizu-Tokugawa Family, one of the 3 second-ranking branch families of the Tokugawa Clan.  The main function of the 3 families was to provide successors to the main family and the second-ranking branch families of the clan when they had no sons.  Karyo worked as a liaison between the women's quarter and the office of the family.