S P O T ／ SPOT-256

Kojinyama Kannonji

荒神山観音寺こうじんやま かんのんじ

An old temple of the Omuro branch of the Shingon school, with the mountain name Kojinyama and a hidden Eleven-faced Kannon as its principal image. Tradition holds it began in 812 when Kobo Daishi enshrined the spirit of Yamato Takeru as a Buddhist image and named the mountain "Kojiyama," and that in 1087 the priest Horyo, following a revelation of the Kannon, found an Eleven-faced Kannon beneath a great cypress and built a hall to house it. It is the 24th station of the Ise Saigoku Thirty-three Kannon Pilgrimage. Popularly, however, it is famous through kodan storytelling, rokyoku ballads, and films as the setting of the "Kojinyama Quarrel" of 1866—said to be the largest brawl in yakuza history—in which Kira Nikichi of the Shimizu Jirocho gang took part. Kasuga no Tsubone, wet nurse of the third shogun Iemitsu, is said to have been a devout patron, donating four Buddhist images and a bronze bell engraved with her name and Tokugawa-family posthumous names. A fire-walking rite is held at the spring festival on April 7–8.