Tōshō-ji Temple

Overview

Tōshō-ji (東勝寺) was the family temple of the Hōjō clan, the warrior house that dominated Japan through the Kamakura shogunate. The temple stood in Kamakura, the shogunal capital, in the valley district of Komachi. It was founded in the Kamakura period and served for generations as the burial place of the Hōjō regents. Its end came in 1333, when the Hōjō themselves set it alight and died inside it rather than surrender to the army of Nitta Yoshisada. The temple was later rebuilt elsewhere under a new name, and the original site was eventually abandoned.

History

Tōshō-ji was constructed in 1237 by Hōjō Yasutoki, the third regent, in memory of his mother, whose tomb was kept at the temple. Its founding priest was Taikō Gyōyū. As the Hōjō family temple — a bodaiji (菩提寺), a temple maintained by a family for memorial services and graves — it occupied a position of unusual importance. According to the Taiheiki, a fourteenth-century war chronicle, every regent from the temple's foundation to the fall of the shogunate was buried there.

The temple's site was chosen with an eye to defence as well as devotion. It stood at the head of a narrow valley, closed off at its base by the deep gorge of the Nameri river and by steep hills on the other three sides. From the temple grounds there was a clear view of the only road crossing the river. The valley was, in effect, a fortress.

That fortress became the Hōjō's last refuge. On 4 July 1333, Nitta Yoshisada's forces entered Kamakura. The last regent, Hōjō Takatoki, left his residence in Komachi and barricaded himself in Tōshō-ji with his family and retainers. Watching the fires consume the city his family had ruled for 150 years, Takatoki and more than 870 members of his household killed themselves. The temple was burned in the same act. The episode is known as the Siege of Tōshō-ji, and it ended Hōjō power for good.

The temple was restored soon after. In the Muromachi period it ranked third among the ten most renowned temples of the Kantō region. It was later abandoned, during the Sengoku period.

What Stands There Today

The temple no longer exists, but its remains lie in the Kasaigayatsu valley in what is now Ōmachi, Kamakura. Tōshō-ji very probably occupied the entire valley. Excavations carried out in 1976, 1996 and 1997 confirmed part of the temple's structure and revealed shards of Chinese pottery and roof tiles bearing the Hōjō family crest. Stones and other surfaces singed by fire were also found, confirming the fire recorded in the chronicles. The site was designated a National Historic Site on 31 July 1998.

About a hundred metres uphill from the temple site, inside the forest, is the Hōjō Takatoki Harakiri Yagura — a yagura (やぐら) being a cave tomb cut into the rock — where tradition holds that the last regent disembowelled himself. Other locations in Kamakura make the same claim. A black stele stands in front of the cave. It was erected in March 1918 by the Kamakuracho Seinendan, and records that Takatoki shut himself in Tōshō-ji with his ancestors' graves, and that he and his household of over 870 people took their own lives there.

After the fall of the shogunate, Ashikaga Takauji, the first Ashikaga shōgun, was ordered by Emperor Go-Daigo to move the temple and the Hōjō remains to a new location, renaming it Hōkai-ji. Because the old neighbourhood was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the Hōjō, a shrine called Tokusō Gongen was erected within the new temple to placate them. That shrine still exists.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 東勝寺. It is read in kana as とうしょうじ, and in romaji as Tōshō-ji.

Breaking it down character by character:

• 東 — read here as とう (tō). It means "east". This is the same character used in 東京 (Tōkyō, "eastern capital") and 関東 (Kantō, "east of the barrier"), the region where Kamakura lies.
• 勝 — read here as しょう (shō). It means "victory" or "to win". It appears in words such as 勝利 (shōri, "victory"). Note that this kanji has several other readings in different compounds, including katsu.
• 寺 — read here as じ (ji). It means "temple", specifically a Buddhist temple. This is the standard suffix on Japanese temple names, as in 清水寺 (Kiyomizu-dera) or 金閣寺 (Kinkaku-ji).

So the whole name means something like "East Victory Temple". The reading of the final character shifts from tera to ji when it follows another element in a temple name, which is why the name is Tōshō-ji and not Tōshō-tera. The macrons in Tōshō-ji mark long vowels: the "ō" in each case is a long "o" sound, held for two beats.

Visiting and Context

The site lies in Kamakura, in the Komachi district, at the Kasaigayatsu valley in present-day Ōmachi. It is a National Historic Site, marked by the stele and by the yagura associated with Hōjō Takatoki. The original temple is gone; the surviving Hōjō memorials were transferred to Hōkai-ji, where the Tokusō Gongen shrine remains.

For students of Japanese, Tōshō-ji is a useful anchor for several strands of the language. The word bodaiji (菩提寺) names the family-temple institution that shaped where and how the Hōjō were buried. The word shikken (執権), usually translated "regent", was the title held by the Hōjō rulers whose graves the temple held. And the Taiheiki, the chronicle that records the temple's history and its destruction, is itself one of the major prose works of medieval Japanese. The temple's name, its fate, and the vocabulary attached to it all belong to the same moment: the collapse of the Kamakura shogunate in 1333.