Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

1625, in honour of Yakushi Niôrai, the Buddhist Æsculapius. It faces the
Ki-mon, or Devil's Gate, of the castle, and was erected upon the model of
the temple of Hi-yei-zan, one of the most famous of the holy places of
Kiyôto. Having founded the temple, the next care of Iyémitsu was to
pray that Morizumi, the second son of the retired emperor, should come
and reside there; and from that time until 1868, the temple was always
presided over by a Miya, or member of the Mikado's family, who was
specially charged with the care of the tomb of Iyéyasu at Nikkô, and
whose position was that of an ecclesiastical chief or primate over the east
of Japan.
The temples in Yedo are not to be compared in point of beauty with
those in and about Peking; what is marble there is wood here. Still they
are very handsome, and in the days of its magnificence the Temple of
Uyéno was one of the finest. Alas! the main temple, the hall in honour of
the sect to which it belongs, the hall of services, the bell-tower, the
entrance-hall, and the residence of the prince of the blood, were all burnt
down in the battle of Uyéno, in the summer of 1868, when the Shogun's
men made their last stand in Yedo against the troops of the Mikado. The
fate of the day was decided by two field-pieces, which the latter contrived
to mount on the roof of a neighbouring tea-house; and the
Shogun's men, driven out of the place, carried off the Miya in the vain
hope of raising his standard in the north as that of a rival Mikado. A few
of the lesser temples and tombs, and the beautiful park-like grounds, are
but the remnants of the former glory of Uyéno. Among these is a temple
in the form of a roofless stage, in honour of the thousand-handed Kwannon.
In the middle ages, during the civil wars between the houses of Gen
and Hei, one Morihisa, a captain of the house of Hei, after the destruction
of his clan, went and prayed for a thousand days at the temple of the
thousand-handed Kwannon at Kiyomidzu, in Kiyôto. His retreat having
been discovered, he was seized and brought bound to Kamakura, the
chief town of the house of Gen. Here he was condemned to die at a place
called Yui, by the sea-shore; but every time that the executioner lifted his
sword to strike, the blade was broken by the god Kwannon, and at the
same time the wife of Yoritomo, the chief of the house of Gen, was
warned in a dream to spare Morihisa's life. So Morihisa was reprieved,
and rose to power in the state; and all this was by the miraculous intervention
of the god Kwannon, who takes such good care of his faithful
votaries. To him this temple is dedicated. A colossal bronze Buddha,
twenty-two feet high, set up some two hundred years ago, and a stone
lantern, twenty feet high, and twelve feet round at the top, are greatly
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