The Healing Jizo: Soto Zen Koganji Temple Adapting to Varying Social Conditions

Title

The Healing Jizo: Soto Zen Koganji Temple Adapting to Varying Social Conditions

Author

Tinka DELAKORDA KAWASHIMA

Page

77-105

DOI

10.6163/tjeas.2016.13(1)77

Abstract

With the implementation of the mandatory Buddhist temple registration system in the Tokugawa period, some Buddhist temples gained stable, economic support for providing funerary services. Without this support Buddhist temples had to focus their activities on the secular needs of the ordinary people. The popular Buddhist deities with healing powers and the associated miracles became the main asset of these temples. The paper, by comparing the early-modern and (post) modern worship at the Soto Zen Koganji temple in Tokyo shows that not only the trans-sectarian and trans-national appropriation of the popular Healing Jizo Bodhisattva helped to contribute to this Zen temple's success, but the main trigger for its success derived from its immediate social and economic surroundings in the adjacent Jizo Street market.

Keyword

Healing Jizō Bodhisattva, Sōtō Zen, Kōganji Temple, prayer temples, kitō dera, Jizō Street market, shopping, Japan

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