Virtual Hiki Saigoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #16 Hozo-ji Temple

     Nagaraku Village in Hiki County, Musashi Province, was located where Toki and Oppe Rivers meets.  The Toki River is the northernmost branch of Iruma River.  Just a kilometer north-east, Ichino River, a branch of the Ara River, runs.  Before Kawanakajima Island was formed, the area might have been in an estuary of several rivers.

     Hozo-ji Temple was founded in Nagaraku Village as a shrine temple of Hikawa Shrine, which was founded in 1597 by by Utsugi Hyogoshin, who was the village's local administrator of the Later Hojo Clan, and Enomoto Shirozaemon, who was subject to Hyogoshin.  They became farmers after the collapse of the Later Hojo Clan in 1590.  As every citizen was to belong to a Buddhist temple under the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1867), they might have founded the temple hastily.  It was abolished after the 1868 Gods and Buddhas Separation Order by the Meiji Restoration Government in haste, with its Kannon-do Hall and graveyard left behind.

Address: 311-2 Nagaraku Kawajima, Hiki District, Saitama 350-0161