What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 19

On May 21, 1333, the warlord Nitta Yoshisada, an imperial loyalist, judged a land invasion of Kamakura invasion too difficult, and waited for low tide. According to tradition, Yoshisada threw his golden sword into the water, and prayed to the sea-god Ryūjin to withdraw the waves and let him through. He did, and he did. The Siege of Kamakura was a bloodbath, the city sacked and its temples burned. Over 6,000 died by their own hand, including the last three regents, and a mass suicide of almost 900 samurai. In 1953, Tokyo University Professor Hisashi Suzuki excavated the remains of 556 bodies. The majority of the 280 skulls he found, women and children included, showed evidence of atrocious sword wounds. And we were having just another day at the beach. To see a world in a grain of sand.




               ‘The osprey always lives on the windswept seashore, 
                because it fears the proximity of human beings.’  
                                                                     Kamo no Chomei