Virtual Mogami 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #10 Kannon-ji Temple

 

     Legend has it that Associate Councillor Ono Takamura (802-853) visited the area to hunt down bandits.  He dropped his personal guardian Buddhist image into a pond.  Years later, a fisher netted the image, and the locals enshrined it.

     Takamura went to Mutsu Province when his father, Minemori (778-830), was appointed to be its governor in 815.  Minemori built the capital of Ideha Province while he was the governor of Mutsu Province.  In 821, Minemori and Takamura returned to the central capital.  Takamura became associate councillor in 847 and became sick in May, 849.  If he had actually visited the area, that should have been sometime between 815 and 821, when he loved riding a horse and shooting.

     Takamura was recorded to have gone on Ise 33 Kannon Pilgrimage.  He was an associate councillor in the Imperial Court of Japan, and was also a good tanka poet.  His tanka poems appeared in Hyakunin Isshu (a classical Japanese anthology of one hundred Japanese tanka poems by one hundred poets) and in Kokin Wakashu (namely, "Collection of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times” compiled in the 10th century).  He was so capable, competent, and efficient that legend has it that he helped Yama to judge the dead in Hell at night, while he worked for the Imperial Court in the daytime.

     All in all, Takamura was a living legend.  The locals might have decorated the history of their temple with a historic legendary name.  Why?

     Kannon-ji Temple was founded by Priest Doshuku in 1109, when Minamoto Mitsukuni (1063-1148) was appointed to be the Governor of Ideha Province, in the spring-fed area at the foot of the alluvial fan formed by Aramachi River.  In 1110, he "bursted into" Sagae Manor, which was owned by the Fujiwara Clan.  In 1086, Emperor Shirakawa (1053-1129) retired and became Retired Emperor.  The rule of Cloistered Emperors started and the rule of the Fujiwara Clan faded.  The first signs of samurai's days appeared.  The Kaminoyama Family, local samurai, might have accumulated power.  They founded their own temple and could have wanted to decorate its history with a historic legendary name.  A couple of generations later, Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199) established the Kamakura Shogunate, the government by samurai, for samurai, and of samurai.

Address: 9-29 Tokamachi, Kaminoyama, Yamagata 999-3153

Phone: 023-672-1421