Virtual Tama Aqueduct Bando 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #23 Soen-ji Temple

 

     Hojo Sakontaro (?-1317) founded Komadome-Hachiman Shrine in Kamima-Hikisawa Village, Ebara County, Musashi Province, in 1308.

     Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199) established the Kamakura Shogunate and became the first Shogun.  After the third Shogun, Sanetomo (1192-1219), was assassinated, Yoritomo's line died out.  It was the Kujo Family, an aristocratic family in Kyoto, that provided the 4th and 5th Shoguns.  As the family's power increased both in Kyoto and Kamakura, the Royal Family and the Hojo Clan, who provided the Regents of the Kamakura Shogunate, conspired and carried out the forced repatriation of the 5th Shogun, Fujiwara Yoritsugu (1239-1256), from Kamakura to Kyoto.  From the 6th to the 9th, the Royal Family provided the Kamakura Shoguns.  In 1308, Prince Morikuni (1301-1333) was inaugurated as the 9th Shogun, who was the last Shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate.

     All in all, the year 1308 might have been Sakontaro's happiest days.  He was also lucky enough to have died in 1317.  In 1333, at the end of the Kamakura Shogunate, the Hojo Clan members committed mass suicide in Tosho-ji Temple in Kamakura.

     Monk Soen built a hermitage near Komadome-Hachiman Shrine.  Priest Shozon changed the hermitage to Komadome-Hachiman Shrine's shrine temple, and named it Soen-ji sometime between 1624 and 1645, when the danka system was being established by the Tokugawa Shogunate.  Under the system, the Tokugawa Clan made the affiliation with a Buddhist temple compulsory to all citizens.

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