Virtual Iruhi Bando 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #33 Shoho-ji Temple

 

     Shoho-ji Temple was founded by Priest Ryoku (?-1258).

     On August 23rd, 1257, a big earthquake broke out in the Kanto Region with its estimated epicenter in the Sagami Bay.  Azumakagami, a half-official chronology by the Kamakura Shogunate, reported: “Around 8:00 pm, there was a big earthquake.  A sound rumbled.  None of the shrines and temples were safe.  Mountains crumbled, houses collapsed, earthen walls all crumbled, the ground cracked in places, and water spouted out.  Flames flared up from fissures in the ground around Nakageuma Bridge. Their color is said to have been blue.”

     The temple might have been founded after the earthquake.

     Shoho-ji Temple keeps a kakebotoke with Thousand-Armed Sahasrabhuja on the top of a mirror.

     A kakebotoke is a Buddhist image on the top of a mirror.  In Shinto, a native Japanese religion, a mirror was an object of worship.  Under the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism, we started engraving a petroglyph of a Buddhist image on a bronze mirror in the 10th century.  Later, those images became gorgeous and three-dimensional.  They were made till the end of the Edo Period, but many of them were discarded after the Gods and Buddhas Separation Order was issued by the Meiji Restoration Government in 1868.

Address: 849 Nishidaira, Tokigawa, Hiki District, Saitama 355-0364

Phone: 0493-67-0035