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Honno-ji
What Did the Temple Work as?
Date:28, Apr, 2018
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
About our introductory articles


Hello, everyone. Today, I'm talking about Honno-ji, one of Kyoto temples. It's very famous among Japanese students as the last place of Oda Nobunaga,a feudal lord of Japan in the late 16th century.

First, I desire to talk about the temple's history. It was completed, opened in 1415. Moved to the present address in 1591. If you went to the present temple, namely, it is not the point where Oda Nobunaga was killed in 1582.



By any histories, we can't be sure that Oda was so devout. Why did he stay at the temple and get killed there? It is not a mystery that some people have got that question.

Why did he stay at the temple? The mist has still covered the reason. We could set up two hypotheses. One is he visited for something so trifling that needed to tell no one why. Another is being there for something secret.

Oda Nobunaga had already been a V.I.P. in 1582. It means that he was always with possibility of being assassinated. It is pretty difficult to think that he didn't ward going out of no use. Then, the former's unlikely.



So, the latter? We first have to know what the Honno-ji was in charge of at the time, in order to have a clue of the secret.

Honno-ji is a temple of the Nichiren branch of Buddhism that had spread to the Tanegashima Island at the time. In 1543, firearms were brought from Portugal to the island. Then, the feudal lord of Tanegashima was one of the Nichiren sect helpers, got to present firearms to Ashikaga Shogun through the Honno-ji.

Honno-ji worked as an important replay point of arms distribution.

It is said that Nobunaga recognized usability of firearms without delay. So it is easy to reckon that Honno-ji was an important position for him. I feel that it is fatal sarcasm for him to have got an insurrection, been killed at such a place.







 

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