Senyo-ji Temple (Chiba-dera)

Senyo-ji, in Chiba-dera-cho, Chuo Ward, Chiba, is a Shingon Buzan-school temple with the mountain name Kaijo-san. Its main image is Juichimen Kannon Bosatsu (the eleven-headed Kannon). It is Temple 29 of the 33-temple Bando Kannon pilgrimage and Temple 47 of the Kanto 88-temple pilgrimage. Pilgrims and other visitors come to this temple, one of the oldest in the city.

According to temple tradition, the priest Gyoki, traveling through eastern Japan in 709, enshrined an Eleven-Headed Kannon here, and the temple took the name Chiba-dera by order of Emperor Shomu. The halls burned in 1160, but excavations in the 1950s suggested that the old precincts were about 126 meters on a side, and Nara-period roof tiles were found, so a large temple complex is thought to have stood here before the fire. Because the temple is close to Inohana Castle (Chiba Castle), the seat of the Chiba clan, it also served as the clan's prayer temple.

The temple gate was rebuilt in 1841. The Kannon hall was rebuilt in 1828, but it was destroyed in an air raid in the Second World War and rebuilt again in 1976. The grounds also hold Ryuzo Shrine, dedicated to Watatsumi no Kami, and the dragon deity of Senyo-ji (Ryugon) is counted among the five guardian deities of the Chiba clan.

The Ginkgo of Senyo-ji, a Chiba Prefecture natural monument, stands about 27 meters tall with a trunk about 10 meters around, and temple tradition says it was planted when Gyoki founded the temple. Its main trunk was lost to lightning and a wartime fire, but its autumn color is best from late November to early December. In 1910 a bronze hanging lantern with a plum-and-bamboo openwork design, bearing an inscription dated 1550, was dug up from a bamboo grove southeast of the temple. It is an Important Cultural Property and is now held by the Tokyo National Museum.

In the Edo period the temple was known for a curious custom called Chiba-warai, in which people in disguise jeered at the misdeeds of the powerful and laughed them off from New Year's Eve into the early hours of New Year's Day. It was a subject for Kobayashi Issa's haiku and Okamoto Kido's plays, and today a volunteer committee carries it on as a final laugh of the year and a first laugh of the new one. On the 21st of January, May and September, the temple holds a great goma fire ritual and a ritual to protect children from illness.

It is about a 10-minute walk from Chibadera Station on the Keisei Chihara Line, or about a 1-minute walk from the Chibadera bus stop on a bus from Chiba Station. By car, the temple is close to the Matsugaoka Interchange on the Keiyo Road, and parking is free. Inohana Park, on the site of the Chiba clan's Inohana Castle (Chiba Castle), makes a natural addition for exploring sites linked to the Chiba clan.