Virtual Tama Aqueduct Chichibu 34 Kannon Pilgrimage #26 Chosen-ji Temple

 

     In the Kamakura Period (1185-1333), people tried cultivating the valleys and ravines of the Musashino Plateau from the south.  Where Sen River meets the southernmost tip of the Musashino Plateau, there is a hill.  The hill came to be called Karasuyama, and Karasuyama Village was developed in the 15th century at the latest.  Settlers came from different communities.  Some invited Goddess Shirahime and others invited God Mitake.  They seem to have been mountaineers.  Some invited Goddess Amaterasu and others invited Goddess Ukanomitama.  They were definitely agricultural people.  Some others even invited Sugawara Michizane (845-903) as a god, of course after his tragic death.  Their religious complex was called Oisenomori, namely Ise Woods with an honorific title O as a prefix.

     The temple burned down in 1650, and was moved to its present place.

     The temple's Kannon-do Hall, Entsu-kaku, was built in 1728 with the copies of the deities of the Saigoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage in it.  Nakata Yoshinobu also painted a crowd of the pilgrims of the Saigoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage in the hall.  The picture shows what people wore and how they behaved in their pilgrimages.

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