Photos

Konnichiwa,

I took this picture of the "Pagoda Kaneiji Temple which is located inside Ueno Zoo premises. Formerly, this temple was a part of the Kaneiji, the temple of the Tokugawa shoguns of Japan, in the Ueno neighbourhood of Tokyo.

Kaneiji Temple was established in 1625 by the Buddhist priest Tenkai, on the request of the Tokugawa shogun. The temple was located to the northwest of Edo Castle, a direction that was considered to be unlucky and therefore needed some spiritual protection. The temple complex was enormous, covering more than a million square meters, and possessing dozens of buildings. It was one of the most important temples of the Tendai sect, with headquarters on Mt. Hiei near Kyoto, and therefore was called the "Hiei of the East." In its glory days it was twice as large as Ueno Park today. Its buildings were almost all destroyed by fire during the short war that raged here when the shogunate fell in 1867, as some of its troops used the temple grounds to make a last stand. The rather simple, present temple buildings were brought from the Kitain Temple in Kawagoe in 1879; they stand north of the park. In the park itself, only two of the original buildings still survive: the Kiyomizudo Temple, a smaller imitation of the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, including the stage; and the Five Story Pagoda (Goju no To) standing forlornly inside Ueno Zoo.
(Source of information: http://www.xs4all.nl/~daikoku/tabi/ensoku/tabi-10.htm)


Mata Ashita,