Enmeiji Temple: The Beheading Jizō Statue

A different reason to look inside

Kozukappara was one of Edo’s major execution grounds. Its history also takes an unexpected turn into medicine.

In 1771, physicians including Sugita Genpaku and Maeno Ryōtaku came here to observe the dissection of an executed prisoner. They brought a Dutch anatomy book and compared its illustrations with the body before them.

The drawings matched what they saw remarkably well. The Chinese-based anatomy long accepted in Japan did not.

That encounter helped prompt the translation project published in 1774 as Kaitai Shinsho, or New Text on Anatomy, a landmark in the development of Western medicine in Japan.

It is an extraordinary piece of history to find behind a small temple beside the tracks. A place where lives were ended also contributed to knowledge that would be used to treat the living.

The Jizō was already thirty years old when the physicians arrived.

Even then, it was not the oldest monument here.

The railway is part of the story

In the photographs, the railway equipment might look like an intrusion into an otherwise historical scene. It helps explain why the scene exists in this particular shape.

The Jizō once stood within the grounds associated with nearby Ekōin, where memorial rites were held for people who died at Kozukappara. After the execution ground closed in the early Meiji period, the area was gradually put to other uses.

In 1895, railway construction required the statue to be moved. The tracks divided the old temple grounds; the southern section eventually became the independent Enmeiji Temple in 1982.

The temple is considerably younger than its principal resident.

Someone had to put it back together

In 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake brought down the Jizō’s left arm and shifted parts of its body, leaving it in danger of collapse.

For all its apparent solidity, the figure is built from more than twenty pieces of granite. It had to be dismantled, repaired and reassembled.

Its calm expression gives very little indication of the amount of work required to keep it sitting there.

The smaller figures offer a different scale of care. In the foreground of this photograph, one wears a knitted cap; behind it, the giant wears its broad, pink-edged bib. Stone is the older material. The clothing belongs to a continuing relationship.