Virtual Sayama 33 Kannon Pilgrimag #18 Unsho-ji Temple

 

     The Ishikawa Family lived in Narahashi Village, Tama County, Musashi Province, for generations.  They were half-farmer and half- samurai.  In 1439, they presented a hall to Unsho-ji Temple.

     Ashikaga Mochiuji (1398-1439) became the 4th Kanto Deputy Shogun in 1409 at the age of 11.  Uesugi Ujinori (?-1417) became the Regent of the Kanto Deputy Shogunate in 1411 in his 40’s.  As Mochiuji entered the rebellious stage, he preferred Uesugi Norimoto (1392-1418).  Mochiuji replaced Ujinori with Norimoto in 1415.  Ujinori was forced to commit suicide on Joanuary 10th, 1417, but the aftermath led to the Eikyo War in 1438

In 1438, the Eikyo War broke out between Ashikaga Mochiuji (1398-1439) and Uesugi Norizane (1410-1466), the Regent of the Kanto Deputy Shogunate, in the Kanto Region.  Although the Ishikawa Family and villagers had kept a village shrine since ancient times, they might have needed Buddhism to relieve themselves when the Kanto Region was plunging into the Warring States Period.

     In 1575, defeated and fleeing samurai damaged the building of Narahashi-Hachiman Shrine, which had been the village shrine of Narahashi Village from ancient times, and the family rebuilt it.  

     From 1560 to 1574, Uesugi Terutora (1530-1578), who was the warlord of Echigo Province, invaded the Kanto Region almost every year.  In 1575, Hojo Ujimasa was busy wiping out Kagetora's remnants.  As the Ishikawa Family didn't attack the remnants, the family might have taken a neutral stance.  As fence-sitters, the family naturally changed their lord from the Later Hojo Clan to the Tokugawa Clan in 1590, when the Later Hojo Clan was destroyed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598).  As fence-sitters, they weren't promoted, and just kept ruling the village. 

     In 1592, Ishikawa Taroemon, the head of the family, was hired by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) as hatamoto.  In 1727, Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684-1751), the 8th Shogun, installed a new merit system to the shogunate.  To increase the number of meritocracy population, he pulled out low-ranking hatamoto samurai from their domains.  As a result, Narahashi Village was expropriated in 1733, and the Ishikawa Family moved to Edo.

Unsho-ji Temple’s graveyard has the graves of the first 5-generation graves of the head of the family under the Tokugawa Shogunate.

     The new merit system installed by Yoshimune caught hatamoto samurai in a monetary economy and caused many of low-ranking samurai to fall into poverty, but it also worked.  Ishikawa Tadafusa (1756-1836) became the head of the family in August 1764.  He was so competent that he was appointed as a negotiator when Adam Laxman (1766-1806) visited Nemuro, Hokkaido, on October 20, 1789, to request the opening of Japan.  Tadafusa even became the Minister of Finance in 1797.  He was not only an efficient bureaucrat but also who understood the sufferings of ordinary people as he had been a low-ranking samurai.  In 1798, he reformed the highway system and reduced the labor and expenses of the locals along highways.  He was praised to be a living god, and you can find small shrines to honor him along the old Nakasen-do Highway.

     Tadafusa’s grave is not in Unsho-ji Temple but in Kokoku-ji Temple (2 Chome-20 Haramachi, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 162-0053).

Address: 1 Chome-363 Narahashi, Higashiyamato, Tokyo 207-0031

Phone: 042-561-0842