the south of the Gogoku Shrine, a monument/shrine of major importance was raised in the late nineteenth century, a site now almost forgotten. This monument was dedicated to the heroes of the movement, in the decade prior to 1868, who opposed the Tokugawa shogunate and who helped to bring about the Meiji Restoration and the modernization of Japan. Here are buried a number of the heroes of that era, including Kido Takayoshi (also known as Kido Koin, 1833-77), one of the leaders of Meiji times.
RYOZEN REKISHIKAN
The Ryozen Rekishikan (Ryozen Historical Museum) is the third formerly important site. It is located across the road from the Gokoku Shrine on Kodai-ji Minami Monzen-dori. It is open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., except on Mondays and the New Year holiday. Entry fee.
The Ryozen Rekishikan is a museum of the history of the period on either side of 1868, the year in which the Tokugawa shogunate passed into history and the modernization of Japan under the name of the Meiji emperor began. The displays consist of photographs, writings, armaments, and other articles which relate the epic period of change in Japanese political and cultural life. Special exhibitions on the Meiji era are also presented. In a sense, this museum replaces the memorial to the heroes of the Restoration, which is mentioned above, since time often effaces the public memory of men and events. As a specialized museum whose labels are in Japanese, few foreign visitors will be interested in or will patronize the museum, but it is mentioned for those interested in the period of drastic change which occurred in Japan from the 1860s on.
The Gokoku Shrine and the Ryozen Rekishikan represent the heady days of the 1870s when the new Meiji government came into power and Japanese nationalism began the flowering that would ultimately lead to disaster and the defeat of Japan in 1945. The Ryozen Kannon Temple, just a short distance from these two important nineteenth-century sites, marks the repentance most Japanese feel for the extremes to which nationalism took the nation.
RYOZEN KANNON
The route to the Ryozen Kannon temple heads back down Kodaiji Minami Monzen-dori to Kita-mon-mae-dori, the first narrow street to the right. A turn on to this new street should bring into sight the towering image of the concrete Ryozen Kannon figure and then the entrance to the temple grounds. The temple is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Entry fee.
In 1955, a 79-foot-tall, seated Kannon image cast in concrete, a memento mori, was constructed by a transportation firm to honor the war dead of the Pacific War (World War II in the Pacific and Asia). It honors not only the Japanese soldiers who died in combat, but also the dead of the Allied forces who opposed Japan. After paying the entry fee, the visitor receives a lighted incense stick; this is to be placed in the large incense pot before the shrine where prayers may be said for the peaceful repose of the dead.
A modest gateway leading into the Ryozen Kannon grounds is guarded by a Nio (Deva King). within the grounds, beyond the entryway, a reflecting pool is situated before a large, roofed incense pot where one places the lit incense stick received at the entry gate and where one can say a prayer for the dead. Behind the incense pot is the main shrine building, topped by the huge Kannon image. On the ground floor is an altar, under the base of the gigantic Kannon figure, and here an Eleven-faced Kannon, the deity of mercy, is the main image. In the northwest section of this level is an image of the recumbent Buddha as he appeared when he passed from this life on achieving nirvana. A five-foot-tall Buddha is in the southwest area. A staircase behind this portion of the building leads into the lower part of the huge Kannon image where various altars are decorated with the figures of the zodiacal year.
Behind this main structure is a memorial hall to the Japanese war dead with a file of the names of all those who died in the years of the Japanese wars of the 1930s and 1940s. To the north of the main temple building is an eight-foot-long memorial footprint of the Buddha, and west of that is a five-foot-tall gold sphere. Beyond, to the north, is a garden. To the south of the main Kannon structure is a memorial hall to the war dead of the Allied forces of the 1940-45 Pacific War. An altar (with English captions) and a file of the names of the Allied dead are maintained here. The altar contains soil from each of the military cemeteries in the Pacific as well. Just west of the Allied memorial, toward the entry gate, is a modern shrine of one thousand Buddhas with an image of a Buddha holding an infant in his arms. To the south of the Allied memorial is an open, domed structure with an outdoor altar where memorial services may be held.
This solemn and impressive contribution of a private citizen's firm to the memory of the war dead is a fitting representation of the sorrow felt by the Japanese for the errors and disasters brought upon so many by the Japanese military rulers of the 1930s and 1940s.
Adjacent to the Ryozen Kannon and to its north is the Kodaiji, the retreat in which Toyotomi Hideyoshi's widow lived when she became a nun after her husband's death in 1598. It represents, in a sense, the conclusion to the story of the hatred of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hideyoshi's successor, for Hideyoshi and his family.
KODAI-JI: TEMPLE AND NUNNERY
When one leaves the Ryozen Kannon Temple, the entrance to the Kodai-ji nunnery is on the south side of the Kodaiji grounds. This entry is adjacent to the open space which often serves as a parking lot for the Ryozen and Kodai-ji temples. If the nunnery is approached from Kita-mon-mae-dori, beyond the entrance to the Ryozen Kannon temple on that street, a path which turns to the right leads along the south side of the Kodai-ji to its entry gate. The Kodai-ji is a Zen temple of the Rinzai branch of Buddhism (Kennin-ji sect) and is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Entry fee.
The Kodai-ji is a nunnery which adds another interesting element to the Toyotomi Hideyoshi-Tokugawa Ieyasu relationship as illustrated in the descriptions of the Hokoji and the Hokoku Shrine of the second tour in this guidebook. The Kodaiji was originally founded in 838, but its renaissance as a Buddhist nunnery began after Hideyoshi's death in 1598. In 1605, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu granted this temple to Hideyoshi's widow, Yodogimi, when she became an ama (nun) to pray for the soul of her husband, and here she lived until shortly before her death which occurred during the siege of Osaka castle in 1615. The temple was designed by two architects under Ieyasu's orders, and by 1604 all of the temple structures had been erected. Sanko Joeki, former abbot of the Kennin-ji, was installed as its founding abbot. To further console Yodogimi, Ieyasu ordered that the Somon gate to Hideyoshi's castle in Fushimi, with its carvings of foxes and dragons by Hidarijingoro, be moved to the Kodai-ji in 1605, and this became the still-extant Omote-mon (Front Gate) to the nunnery. (the gate on the west side of the temple grounds is not open to the public; the front or main gate is on the southern side of the nunnery.) the Keisho-den was also moved from Fushimi to serve as Yodogimi's residence. This building was later turned into the Kohojo (Abbot's Small Quarters), but in 1847 it burned to the ground along with the Daihojo (Abbot's Large Quarters), the Kara-mon (Chinese-style Gateway), and other buildings. The temple is said to have been one of the most attractive temples in the luxurious Momoyama style of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Yodogimi, who had taken the religious name of Kodai-in, spared no expense in the enhancement of the Kodai-ji. At best, Yodogimi spent tragic years here as a nun. The Hokoji and its Buddha were completed in 1612 in her husband's memory, and its great bell was dedicated in 1614. Ieyasu (as detailed under the entry on the Hokoji) interpreted the inscription on the bell as an offense against him. In November of 1614 Ieyasu led his army against Hideyoshi's son Hideyori at his Osaka castle; a truce was arranged wherein the outer defensive walls were leveled and the moat was filled in. The following year, Ieyasu treacherously returned to the attack when he led 200,000 soldiers in a second battle against the castle (which Hideyori had inherited from his father). Hideyori's 100,000 men were overwhelmed, and the Toyotomi family was annihilated. Hideyori's son of seven was beheaded, his head being posted on a bridge over the Kamogawa river in Kyoto as were those of criminals or traitors. Hideyori's five-year-old daughter was sent to a nunnery in Kamakura for the
