Virtual Old Tsugaru 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #6 Teisho-ji Temple

 

     Teisho-ji Temple was founded in Daikoji Village sometime between 1558 and 1570 at the end of the Muromachi Period (1336-1573) by Tsugaru Tamenobu (1550-1608), who would later become the first lord of the Hirosaki Domain, to pray for the comfort of his birth mother in the other world.  The temple's name Teisho was after the posthumous Buddhist name of her.  When the birth mother of the second lord of the domain, Tsugaru Nobuhira (1586-1631), passed away in 1608, she was buried in the precincts of the temple.  The temple was moved to Teramachi around the time that Hirosaki Castle was completed in 1611.  After Teramachi was destroyed by fire in 1649, the temple was moved in 1650 to its current location,  where Shin-Teramachi was laid out as a defense facility to the south of Hirosaki Castle.

     Teishoji Temple was also the burial site of some women related to the Tsugaru Clan, including Tamenobu's daughter Iki, and the mother of the 3rd lord Nobuyoshi (1619-1655), Tatsuhime (1592-1623), who was a daughter of Ishida Mitsunari (1560-1600), who became an adopted daughter of Kodaiin (1548-1624), the wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), and who became a concubine of Nobuhira.

     Teisho-ji Temple was placed in a strategically important position in Shin-Teramachi.  Its garden was designed to have a hill and pond being a miniature version of the temple's domain, modeled after Mt. Iwaki, the Iwaki River, and the Tsugaru Plain, with the mountains in the far background functioning as if they were part of the garden.  The garden is said to have been designed by Nomoto Dogen (1655－1714), who was from Kyoto, in 1706.  Dogen introduced sericulture and silk manufacturing, and planting paper mulberries and paper manufacturing to the Hirosaki Domain.

Address: 108 Shinteramachi, Hirosaki, Aomori 036-8214

Phone: 0172-32-1082