Mantoku-ji

The Mantoku-ji ( Japanese. 満徳寺 ) is a Buddhist temple in the Tokugawa-chō ( 徳川町 ) district of the Japanese city of Ōta (Gunma Prefecture). It was of historical importance in particular through its functions as a legitimizing institution for the Tokugawa hegemony and as a nunnery for women seeking refuge ( 駆け込み寺 , Kakekomi-dera ). As a monastery in which women could file for a divorce on their own initiative ( 縁切り寺 , Enkiri-dera ), the Mantoku-ji was a unique institution in the Edo period alongside the Tōkei-ji in Kamakura .

The current structure is a replica of the main hall of the original temple, completed in 1994, which was closed by the Meiji government in 1872 . It is located in close proximity to the Enkiridera Mantokuji Shiryōkan ( 縁切寺満徳寺資料館 ) Museum , which manages it.

history

According to its own records, the Mantoku-ji was originally founded in Tokugawa-gō ( 徳川郷 ) in the province of Kōzuke by Nitta Yoshisue ( 新田義季 ;? –1246), a warrior with Minamoto descent. Originally it is said to have been a Ji-shū monastery , which is countered by the fact that the name of the Nitta family did not appear in the written Ji-shū registers of the deceased until 1418 and the names of the first two heads, Jōnen ( 浄念 ) and Jōin ( 浄院 ), rather an original affiliation to the likewise amidistic Jōdo-shū likely.

Because of its close association with the Nitta family, who were persecuted by the Ashikaga , the mantoku-ji struggled as an independent institution during the Ashikaga shogunate .

All of a sudden, this changed when Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) declared the Mantoku-ji to be his ancestral temple in 1591. This was part of his efforts to have his membership of the Nitta family recognized, as their Minamoto descent was one of the traditional conditions that legitimized the assumption of the Shogun office. On this occasion, Ieyasu awarded the temple a so-called red seal ( 朱印 , shuin ) and an annual income of 100 koku and allowed it to be extraterritorial for its site . By the end of the Edo period , the Tokugawa shoguns usually confirmed the special status of Mantoku-ji used by Ieyasu.

In its history, the Mantoku-ji was largely autonomous, but formally belonged to the Ji-shū and was also associated with the Jōdo-shū. After the Shōjōkō-ji ( 清浄光寺 ), main temple of the Ji-shū sect Yugyō-ha , tried to have the Mantoku-ji declared one of its branch temples , this brought the matter before the Bakufu , which the Mantoku-ji declared an independent temple (( 本寺 , ippon-ji ) in 1746 . From the late eighteenth century there were several attempts by the Zōjō-ji ( 増上寺 ), main temple of the Jōdo-shū sect Chinzei-ha , to gain influence on the Mantoku-ji, but all remained largely unsuccessful.

With the end of the Tokugawa period, government support for mantoku-ji also ended. Although the clergy of the temple under their last ruler, Chihon ( 智本 ), in view of the new political circumstances brought about by the Meiji Restoration , endeavored to prove the loyal attachment of their institution to the Tennō with documents, the nuns of the temple became in the 9th month of the year 1872 forcibly placed in the layman's state and distributed the treasures and artifacts of the temple to the surrounding temples and Shinto shrines .

Various attempts by Chihon's adoptive son, (Suzuki) Kawagoe Tetsugorō ( （鈴木）川越哲五郎 ), and his descendants to revive the temple were not particularly successful. Later reconstructions in 1913 and 1953 were sometimes only used as places of residence for local community meetings. In 1992 the last new building was torn down and replaced by today's replica of the old main hall.

literature

Diana E. Wright: “Severing the Karmic Ties that Bind. The 'Divorce Temple' Mantokuji ”, in: Monumenta Nipponica , Vol. 52, No. 3 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 357-380.

Web links

Official website of the museum - Japanese

36.253433333333 139.286625Coordinates: 36 ° 15 '12.4 " N , 139 ° 17' 11.9" E