Senshōji Temple

Senshōji is a Sōtō Zen temple in Aomi, Fujinomiya, with the mountain name Kōkokuzan. According to Sengen Jinja no Rekishi, in 1395 (Ōei 2) Fuji Naritoki, the 23rd Grand Priest of Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha, was moved by a dream together with the Zen master Junpaku, whom he revered. Naritoki then established the temple on his own land in Aomi, with Junpaku as its founding priest. Naritoki died in the ninth month of the following year and was buried at Senshōji. It is also said that the temple was originally Shingon and was converted to the Sōtō school.

For nearly three hundred years following Naritoki’s time, Senshōji served as the family temple for the Fuji Grand Priests, handling the funerals and memorial services of successive heads of the family. The temple preserves the memorial tablet of the 21st Grand Priest, Fuji Naotoki, marked “the first,” which shows that the Fuji family regarded Naotoki as the founder of the house.

In the tenth month of 1583 (Tenshō 11), Ide Masatsugu confirmed the temple’s landholding of 10 kan 360 mon and exempted it from duties on the woods and bamboo within the temple grounds and before its gate. In 1590 (Tenshō 18), the temple received a vermilion-seal document from Toyotomi Hideyoshi recognizing 16 koku of temple land in Aomi.

During the Kanbun era (1661 to 1673), the 34th Grand Priest, Fuji Nobumoto, left the Senshōji parish and built a new temple, Hōshakuji, in the town of Ōmiya. From that point on, Hōshakuji served as the family temple of the Grand Priests, though Senshōji has continued on as a temple to the present day.

Two heads of the Kumon Fuji family in the early Edo period were also buried at Senshōji. Later, toward the end of the summer of 1944 (Shōwa 19), third- and fifth-year boys from Ōhara National School in Tokyo’s Ebara Ward were evacuated as a group to Senshōji. They slept in the main hall and the monks’ quarters while attending classes at Fujioka National School.