Kaisenji — Local services in Kobe

Fukuhara 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #3 Kaisen-ji Temple Emperor Toba (1103-1156) reigned from 1107 till 1123. Yet, after 1129 till his death, he had the executive power of the central government as a cloistered Emperor. He located his cloistered office in Toba as his name suggests. South of Toba, there used to lay lakes and marshes called Ogura-Ice Lake. The lake was 7 square kilometers at an altitude of about 11 meters and had a depth of 1.7 meters. Toba used to be a river port of the Heian-kyo Capital at the south-western corner of the city. The Cloistered Emperor Toba intended to control the logistics of the taxes and goods being sent to the capital. After Toba’s death, Taira Kiyomori (1118-1181), who gained hegemony in the central government, moved his hegemonic office, and later the capital itself, further south-west, to today’s Kobe, and named the capital Fukuhara. After Kiyomori’s death, Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199) challenged the Taira Clan’s hegemony. When the army of the Minamoto Clan advanced to the Fukuhara Capital, the Taira Clan made 2 defense lines: East and West. The Eastern defense line was laid around today’s Sannomiya area, and the Western defense line somewhere between today’s Suma and Nagata Wards. Taira Atsumori (1169-1184) joined the Western defense line. He was defeated and beheaded, accordingly, somewhere on the beach between Suma and Nagata. Today, Suma-dera Temple, the #7 temple of the Fukuhara 33 Kannon Pilgrimage, openly claims it was near the temple in Suma that Atsumori was killed, and has a mound for his head. Meanwhile, #3 Kaisen-ji Temple in Nagata modestly hints Atsumori was killed on the beach near the temple. Suma-dera Temple seems to hold hegemony on this issue. On January 17th, 1995, the Great Hanshin Earthquake shook the whole area. Houses collapsed and the Rokkakumichi Shopping Mall was engulfed in flames. The priest, Somekawa Shincho, walked around the area to make sure that the parishioners were safe. In front of a collapsed house, a man was sitting and said, “My wife is caught under it.” A couple days later, her body was carried out. The priest chanted a sutra for her. 3 months after the earthquake, Shincho started visiting the parishioners who were living in temporary houses in separate places around Kobe. They unanimously said, “We want to see the others, but don’t have houses or the temple.” In 1996, the priest built a temporary temple building so that the parishioners could gather there, but, after that, he put the reconstruction of the town above that of the temple. About 15 years later, in 2011, he started rebuilding the temple, hearing a parishioner say, “I‘d like to see a new temple building before I die.” It was finished in 2016, 21 years after...

大きな建物に圧巻です。 立派な仏像？すいません無知で…。 本当に綺麗。 瓦も海泉って全て書いてあり、 高いんだろうな…と思ったら やはり震災…。 大事にして貰えて、大変な想いをされたんだなぁと。 私も、２０歳の時に震災の被害を受けました。少しあの頃に戻れました。...

建物が凄く立派で瓦１枚１枚に海泉の文字が入ってました。 本堂の造りも素晴しかったです。 御朱印も丁寧に対応して頂きました。 無料駐...