Virtual Chichibu 34 Kannon Pilgrimage #4 Kinsho-ji Temple

 

     Araki Tange was a bad drunk.  One day, a young female pilgrim came to him and begged for something to eat.  She mended his ways and he built an Avalokitesvara hall, which was said to have been the start of Kinsho-ji Temple.  Believe it or not, its temple town still has Araki Mineral Spring.

     Yoshinoya Hanzaemon and his wife lived in Tori-Abura-cho in Edo, today's Nihonbashi-odenma-cho Chuo City, Tokyo 103-0011.  They didn't have a child and visited the Chichibu 34 Kannon Pilgrimage.  Later, they had a baby.  In 1789, the priest of Kinsho-ji Temple appealed to the pilgrims for presenting 1,000 Buddhist stone images.  Hearing of the appeal, Hanzaemon first had a famous painter draw his wife and baby.  Then, he had a local stone engraver in Chichibu carve an Avalokitesvara stone image with a baby held in its arms after the painting of his wife and baby.  He presented the image to the temple on August 12th, 1791.

     Presenting Buddhist stone images to the temple came into fashion.  Stones were dug out in the west of Chichibu Valley, carried to the east of the valley where Kinsho-ji Temple was located, and carved there.  It was believed that carrying stones even for a mile or two would be good deeds.  The number was achieved in 7 years, but more and more stone images were presented.  The temple had more than 3,000 of them in their golden age.  Even today, you can count over 1,300 of them.

     The Sanbagawa metamorphic belt is a metamorphic rock belt that borders the outer zone of the Median Tectonic Line. The belt is considered to be the largest wide-area metamorphic belt in Japan, and has low-temperature and high-pressure type metamorphic rocks.  In the back of Kinsho-ji Temple, a cave yawns with hard metamorphic rocks as ceiling and with weak sedimentary rocks weathered away.

     It seems the Chichibu 34 Kannon Pilgrimage temples had something to do with caves as their origins.

Address: 1803 Yamada, Chichibu, Saitama 368-0004

Phone: 0494-23-1758