51爆料

Chronological Source Books of Japanese History is a series which the Historiographical Institute has been publishing for 125 years. For more information on this series as a whole, reference can be made to the summaries of other volumes on this website. In particular, the summary of part 5, volume 37 explains “Year-end Miscellaneous Events”.
 
Part 3 (1086-1185) of the series deals with the late Heian period, otherwise known as the “Insei Period”. The majority of the content consists of the chronicle, in which brief outlines of historical events are given in chronological order, and under each outline a selection of relevant sources is quoted. At the end of each year is an additional section called “miscellaneous events”, which records sources, grouped into several categories, that do not qualify for their own outlines.

In his later years, Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), the father of Japanese folklore studies, is said to have recommended that young researchers consult the miscellaneous sources sections due to their interesting content. Although Yanagita himself appears to have cited the chronicle more frequently, his interest nonetheless lay in issues peripheral to the main events detailed in the outlines, and his work demonstrates the potential that historical sources hold for the field of folklore studies.
 
Amongst the sources recorded in the miscellaneous events section for the third year of Hōan (1122) is a particularly interesting account of the origin of the Eight Lotus Lectures held at the ?tsuka Jizō Hall in Izumi Province, Hine District, Kogi Township. The Jizō Hall would later develop into the present temple of Shōfukuji (formerly known as Shōgunji) in the Jizōdō neighbourhood of Kaizuka City and is rumoured to have once housed the Kuramochi ?ji shrine, one of many small shrines that ran along the Kumano pilgrimage route. “?tsuka” (literally “big mound”) presumably refers to the nearby burial mound of Maruyama Kofun. According to this record, when an old monk passed away his hermitage was moved to the site and turned into a bathhouse, which was also used by travellers who passed through the area. Eventually the site was developed into a temple and in the third year of Hōan a statue of the Boddhisattva Jizō was enshrined within. Not long after, a man in a nearby village who had become sick and was close to death saw a dream: he was in hell and being chased by demons, but he was saved by a noble monk riding in a carriage. When he asked the monk his name, the monk responded that he was a monk of the ?tsuka Jizō Hall. When the man woke and told what he had seen to all those around him, their fervour swelled, and from then on they conducted the Eight Lotus Lectures on the twenty-fourth day of the first month of every year. This story, one of several medieval tales of visits to hell and back, extols the blessings of the Bodhisattva Jizō, and gives us a glimpse at the means by which Buddhist teachings spread throughout local society.
 
There are several sources relating to the establishment of these lectures, which add up to several pages of content. An argument might therefore be made that the event warrants its own entry in the chronicle. However, a comparison with previous volumes suggests that the event is a somewhat too specific, and to include all similar events would compromise the concentration of the chronicle. This is precisely why the miscellaneous events section is necessary to complement the chronicle. Part of the significance of source collections is that regardless of how events are categorized, readers can examine and use sources that pique their own interest while considering the perspective of the compiler.

Translated by George Wollaston
 

(Written by FUJIWARA Shigeo, Professor, Historiographical Institute / 2025)