Kan'ei-ji

The current hondô (main hall) of Kan'ei-ji, originally built c. 1638, and relocated to Kan'ei-ji from Kawagoe in the 1870s, to replace the hondô lost in 1868.

The main gate to the honbô (Abbot's Residence) of Kan'ei-ji, which once stood where the main hall of the Tokyo National Museum stands today. This gate remained in place and served as the main entrance for the museum upon the museum's opening in 1878, but following the museum's reconstruction after the 1923 Great Kantô Earthquake, the gate was moved to its current location, in front of Ueno Rinnô-ji.

Built: 1625
Other Names: 東叡山 (Touei-zan)
Japanese: 寛永寺 (Kan'ei-ji)

Kan'ei-ji is a Tendai Buddhist temple located in Ueno Park; along with Zôjô-ji, it was one of two Tokugawa clan family temples in the Tokugawa shogunal capital of Edo. Five Tokugawa shoguns were buried on the temple grounds; six more are buried at Zôjô-ji.

The temple was originally built in 1625 to help defend the shogunal capital of Edo from the unlucky northeastern direction. It was called Tôei-zan ("East-ei-zan") in reference to it being an eastern counterpart to Mt. Hiei (Hiei-zan), which guards Kyoto in the same manner.^[1] The construction and establishment of Kan'ei-ji was overseen by Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu; it was founded by the monk Tenkai, and served as the center of the Tendai sect for the Kantô region. Along with Rinnô-ji in Nikkô and Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei, it became one of the chief three Tendai temples in the archipelago, securing, through its connections with the shogunate, the power of Tendai within Japan's religious hierarchies.

Prince Morizumi (Shuchô hosshinnô), a son of Emperor Go-Mizunoo, served as the first head priest (zasu) of the temple, a position which continued to be occupied by members of the Imperial family down through the generations. These monzeki (priests of aristocratic or Imperial lineage) associated with Kan'ei-ji came to be called Rinnôji-no-miya.^[1]

During the battle of Ueno in 1868, as the shogunate fell, a group of pro-shogunate loyalists known as the Shôgitai holed up in the temple, which was accordingly attacked. Many of those killed that day are formally buried at the temple.

The temple suffered extensive damage and was all but destroyed completely in the Allied bombings of Tokyo in 1945. Several buildings on the grounds survive, or were rebuilt, but the temple grounds, which once covered the full area of what is today Ueno Park, have been shrunk considerably. The tombs of three shoguns (Tokugawa Ieharu, Ienari, and Iesada) survive, but those of Tokugawa Ietsuna and Tokugawa Tsunayoshi were destroyed.

Kan'ei-ji is today a designated Important Cultural Property.

References

Plaques on site.
"Kan'ei-ji." Digital Daijisen. Shogakukan.

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Maehira Fusaaki, "Edo bakufu to Ryûkyû shisetsu - Tôshôgû sankei wo chûshin ni" 江戸幕府と琉球使節～東照宮参詣を中心に, in Ryûkyû shisetsu, Edo he iku!, Okinawa Prefectural Museum (2009), 69.

[maehira69-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Maehira Fusaaki, "Edo bakufu to Ryûkyû shisetsu - Tôshôgû sankei wo chûshin ni" 江戸幕府と琉球使節～東照宮参詣を中心に, in Ryûkyû shisetsu, Edo he iku!, Okinawa Prefectural Museum (2009), 69.

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