is a

Buddhist temple A Buddhist temple or Buddhist monastery is the place of worship for Buddhists, the followers of Buddhism. They include the structures called vihara, chaitya, stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions and languages. Temples in Buddhism represen ...

in the Kiyotaki neighborhood of the city of Maibara,

Shiga Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,412,916 (1 October 2015) and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Prefecture to the nort ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It belongs to the

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Lotus School (天台法華宗 ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just "''hokke shū''") is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition (with significant esoteric elements) officially established in Japan in 806 by the Japanese m ...

school of

Japanese Buddhism Buddhism has been practiced in Japan since about the 6th century CE. Japanese Buddhism () created many new Buddhist schools, and some schools are original to Japan and some are derived from Chinese Buddhist schools. Japanese Buddhism has had a ...

and its main image is a ''

hibutsu are Japanese Buddhist icons or statues concealed from public view. ''Hibutsu'' are generally located within Buddhist temples in shrines called . They are generally unavailable for viewing or worship, although they are brought out for specific rel ...

'' statue of Sho-Kannon Bosatsu. The temple is noted as the ''

bodaiji A in Japanese Buddhism is a temple which, generation after generation, takes care of a family's dead, giving them burial and performing ceremonies in their soul's favor.Iwanami kojien The name is derived from the term , which originally meant jus ...

'' of the

Kyōgoku clan The were a Japanese ''daimyō'' clan which rose to prominence during the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Edo period, Edo periods. The clan descend from the Emperor Uda, Uda Minamoto clan, Genji through the Sasaki clan.Papinot, Jacques. (2003)''Nobi ...

, a prominent

Sengoku The was a period in Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the feudal system of Japan under the Ashikaga shogunate. Various s ...

and

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

'' clan. The clan cemetery was designated a National Historic Site in 1936.

History

Tokugen-in is also known as . It was established in 1283 by the founder of the Kyōgoku clan, Kyōgoku Ujinobu, who was ''

shugo , commonly translated as “(military) governor,” “protector,” or “constable,” was a title given to certain officials in feudal Japan. They were each appointed by the ''shōgun'' to oversee one or more of the provinces of Japan. The pos ...

'' of

Ōmi Province was a province of Japan, which today comprises Shiga Prefecture. It was one of the provinces that made up the Tōsandō circuit. Its nickname is . Under the ''Engishiki'' classification system, Ōmi was ranked as one of the 13 "great countrie ...

. The Kyōgoku clan descended from the Uda Genji through the

Sasaki clan are a historical Japanese clan. Overview After World War II the clans of Sasaki-rokkaku were combined, the clans were spread out between South Eastern Asian islands and the head of the clan left Japan and eventually moved to the United States ...

.Papinot, Jacques. (2003)
''Nobiliare du Japon'', pp. 27–28.
/ref> Their name derives from the Kyōgoku quarter of

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

during the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

.Iwao, Seiichi ''et al.'' (2002)
''Dictionnaire historique du Japon'', p. 1704.
/ref> The Kyōgoku served as ''shugo'' of Ōmi, Hida,

Izumo Izumo (出雲) may refer to: Locations * Izumo Province, an old province of Japan * Izumo, Shimane, a city located in Shimane Prefecture ** Izumo Airport * Izumo-taisha, one of Japan's most ancient and important Shinto shrines Ships * ''Izumo ...

and

Oki Province was a province of Japan consisted of the Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan, located off the coast of the provinces of Izumo and Hōki. The area is now Oki District in modern Shimane Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Awa no Kuni' ...

s at various times in the period before the

Ōnin War The , also known as the Upheaval of Ōnin and Ōnin-Bunmei war, was a civil war that lasted from 1467 to 1477, during the Muromachi period in Japan. ''Ōnin'' refers to the Japanese era during which the war started; the war ended during the Bunmei ...

. In 1672, the 20th hereditary chieftain, Kyōgoku Taketoyo, the ''daimyō'' of

Marugame Domain 270px, Kyōgoku Akiyuki 270px, Marugame Castle was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, in what is now Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It was centered around Marugame Castle, and was ruled throughout mu ...

Sanuki Province was a province of Japan in the area of northeastern Shikoku. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Sanuki''" in . Sanuki bordered on Awa to the south, and Iyo to the west. Its abbreviated form name was . In terms of the Gokishichidō system, ...

, successful petitioned the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

for permission to exchange two villages from his holdings in

Harima Province or Banshū (播州) was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is the southwestern part of present-day Hyōgo Prefecture. Harima bordered on Tajima, Tanba, Settsu, Bizen, and Mimasaka Provinces. Its capital was Himeji. During the ...

with two villages in

surrounding this temple, which he then reconstructed. The temple's name was formally changed to "Tokugen-in" after the posthumous name of his father, Kyōgoku Takakazu. A three-story

Pagoda A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...

was constructed, and he gathered the tombstones of his ancestors from various locations and organized them into one place. This three-storied pagoda was designated as a Tangible Cultural Property of Shiga Prefecture in 1973. The tombs consist of two rows of ''

hōkyōintō A is a Japanese pagoda, so called because it originally contained the .Iwanami Kōjien Japanese dictionary A Chinese variant of the Indian stūpa, it was originally conceived as a cenotaph of the King of Wuyue – Qian Liu. Structure and funct ...

'' arranged in two rows. That of Kyōgoku Ujinobu has a height of 278 cm. The upper row consists of eighteen tombs from the first to the 18th generation. The lower row consists of 14 tombs of the 15th generation onwards, with the sizes of the monuments varying depending on the rise and fall in the fortunes of the clan, and form a valuable resource in the study of how the ''hōkyōintō'' monuments evolved from the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

through the end of the

. The temple has a

Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...

in a typical style of the early Edo period, and is a Shiga Prefectural Place of Scenic Beauty. Tokugen-in is a 30-minute walk from the

JR Central is the main railway company operating in the Chūbu (Nagoya) region of central Japan. It is officially abbreviated in English as JR Central and in Japanese as JR Tōkai ( ja, JR東海, links=no). ''Tōkai'' is a reference to the geographical ...

Kashiwabara Station or ten minutes by car from

Ōmi-Nagaoka Station is a passenger railway station located in the city of Maibara, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, operated by the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Tōkai). It is also a freight depot for the Japan Freight Railway Company (JR Freight). Lines Ōmi-Nagao ...

Gallery

Tokugen-in-3Ju-No-Tou.JPG, Three-story Pagoda Tokugen-in-Bosho.JPG, Kyōgoku cemetery Tokugen-in-Teien.JPG, Tokugen-in gardens

References

External links

Maibara city home page

Shiga-Biwako Tourist Information page
{{Buddhist temples in Japan Buddhist temples in Shiga Prefecture Historic Sites of Japan Tendai temples Maibara, Shiga Ōmi Province Kyōgoku clan

History

Gallery

See also

References

External links