Visiting Sengakuji Temple on a snowing day/Carlos Pueblo

Visiting Sengakuji Temple on a snowing day/Carlos Pueblo

It was snowing overnight, for the first time of this year, when I arrived in

Tokyo. Snow was piled up on the roof and street and was still snowing in

the day with a mixture of icy rain. I managed to get on rush hour trains

to Sengakuji Temple, a bury place for a true samurai story in Edo era.

This Zen Buddhist temple is located at the harbor district not for from

JR Sinakawa station and is a famous tourist destination. I was very attracted

in the fall of 2014 while visiting Hiroshima Castle, a young political champion

manager refreshed my memory of the 47 Ronins legend and I went on to

check Wikipadia and decided to visit this temple. Recently, there is an English

movie released, 47 Ronins, from Hollywood about the story which is about

how the unemployed retainers to revenge the shame of their lord on a matter

of insult by another powerful Shogun officer. The young local lord failed to

kill the senior officer at a hallway of the Shogun’s office and was order to

commit suicide, seppuku cutting his own stomach, at the same day of the event

and was buried at the temple. One and half years later, 47 of his former retainers,

some of the were actually quite aged, went on to Edo to kill the powerful officier

and his family then surrender to the authority and were ordered to seppuku at

the temple. During Meji era, the emperor pardoned their act and the story became

a national legend.

The temple itself is not that huge, yet there is a subway station under its name.

I didn’t have sufficient time and environment to admire this legend because that

It was snowing and raining, I lost a glove while taking a picture and was in a hurry

to back tract my way to find it. I did find it on the ground yet it was wet. Two days

later I lost it again on my way up to the old ruins of Sendai Castle and never got it

back.

It was very miserable going to place to place on that snowing day. I finally manage

to arrive at Tokyo Tech at Okayama campus to visit my old neighbor Kiyoshi Otani

San. He used to be a bureau chief of Nikkei News of Houston   and after his retirement

, he becomes the vice president of this prestige university. He gave me a tourist book

for his home town Himeje, famous for its Himeji Castle; therefore, I did make a trip to

that city later on.

I also had a dinner with Haruhikoya Yamada San whom I met at a hostel in London

In 2015. He took me to a Japanese dinner at a nearby Shinpocho district. It was very

Good and he also introduced me the name of a raw fish and where it was from, and

was also famous for its lacquer ware. I forgot to take his drawing paper to check on

the place.