The Final Resting Site of the Tokugawa Shoguns

The Toeizan Kaneiji was built for the geomantic protection of Edo Castle. Although famous today as one of the bodaiji, or funeral temples, for the Tokugawa clan after the Zojoji in Shiba. Kaneiji was originally considered a holy site for prayer, modeled after Hieizan's Enryakuji temple.  Not somewhere initially intended to be sullied by a funerary pall, it seems an exception was made for the Tokugawa. Ultimately, six of the fifteen Tokugawa rulers were interred in the family mausoleum: 4th shogun Ietsuna, 5th shogun Tsunayoshi, 8th shogun Yoshimune, 10th shogun Ieharu, 11th shogun Ienari, and 13th shogun Iesada. 

Although it is off-limits to the public, I was given a rare tour of the mausoleum of Ietsuna and Tsunayoshi. Passing under the impressive Imperial Scroll Gate, upon setting foot in the hallowed precincts, I felt a chill down my spine as if being purified by the rarefied air. The site was originally populated with a haiden worship hall, bell tower, and perambulatory cloisters. But after the passage of centuries, all that remains of the former splendor, apart from the stone funerary towers for each shogun, are the Imperial Scroll Gate and the chozuya, a decorative trough holding water for ritual purification.

Rumor has it that the Land of Pure Bliss can be found inside the mausoleum, a capsule of Buddhist paradise on earth. Even as war and natural disaster felled the other structures which once stood on the Kaneiji grounds, the funerary pagodas survived with hardly a scratch, perhaps through divine intervention. The mausoleum contains the graves of 5th shogun Tsunayoshi, 8th shogun Yoshimune, and 13th shogun Iesada, along with one of Iesada's wives, Tensho-in, also known as Atsuhime. ''During Yoshimune's time, the shoguns were prohibited from erecting opulent new mausoleums,'' explained Toeizan Kaneiji priest Ryogaku Ishikawa. ''They were only allowed to build these funerary pagodas, sharing mausoleum real-estate with their ancestors.'' 

Curiously, the graves of the Tokugawa shogun all face the same direction. ''The graves were situated to face Edo Castle; it seems that back in those times, people were in the practice of orienting graves in a direction that was meaningful to the deceased.'' He adds that the shoguns were reportedly buried seated directly underneath the stone markers, still garbed in their regal vestments. Even in death, the shoguns watch over their city for eternity.