Difference between revisions of "Gokoku-ji (Tokyo)"
(No difference)
|
Revision as of 22:14, 16 September 2013
- Established: 1682
- Japanese: 護国寺 (gokoku-ji)
The Gokoku-ji (lit. "Protection of the Nation Temple") in Tokyo was founded in 1682 as a private temple for Keishôin, the mother of Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.
The temple contains a Tôshôgû, a Shinto shrine dedicated to the spirit of Tokugawa Ieyasu, erected within the grounds in 1691. Six years later, the main hall of the temple was rebuilt, and the temple was reestablished as a public temple, no longer a private space.
The temple is dedicated to Daigensui Myôô, a deity associated with the protection of the realm, and in particular the defeat or destruction of enemies of the state. Daigensui is also enshrined in at least one temple in Yamashiro province, serving as protector of the Imperial capital of Kyoto; here, in Edo, he was chosen as a guardian deity to protect the Tokugawa shogunate.
Another prominent object of worship at the temple is an image of the 33-bodied Buddha (sanjûsanjin), commissioned in 1704 by Keishôin upon her 77th birthday; each of the thirty-three statues contains a strand of Keishôin's hair, and one is believed to have been sculpted to represent Keishôin herself, as a spirit, deity, or Buddha helping to protect the shogun and his realm.
Adjacent to the Gokoku-ji is the Toshima-ga-oka Cemetery, which contains exclusively Imperial graves.
References
- Anne Walthall, "Hiding the shoguns: Secrecy and the nature of political authority in Tokugawa Japan," in Bernard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen (eds.) The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion, Routledge (2006), 347-348.
