is a Buddhist temple located in the city of Ichikawa

Ichikawa, Chiba

is a city located in northwest Chiba, Japan, approximately 20 kilometers from the center of Tokyo. The city was founded on November 3, 1934. As of January 1, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 474,586 and a density of 8,259.42 persons per km². The total area is 57.46 km²...

 in Chiba Prefecture

Chiba Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region and the Greater Tokyo Area. Its capital is Chiba City.- History :Chiba Prefecture was established on June 15, 1873 with the merger of Kisarazu Prefecture and Inba Prefecture...

. Kamei-in is a Nichiren Buddhist

Nichiren Buddhism

Nichiren Buddhism is a branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism based on the teachings of the 13th century Japanese monk Nichiren...

 temple noted for the Mama Well.

History

Kamei-in was built early in the Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 in 1635 as a retirement temple for the 11th abbot of nearby Guhō-ji. Kamei-in is located directly to the southeast of the Guhō-ji, and remains a sub-temple of it. It was originally called Bin'i-bō. In 1705 an administrator from the Tokugawa shogunate

Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

, Nagayori Suzuki, began a restoration of Kame-in using stones from Nikkō Tōshō-gū, in Nikkō, Tochigi Prefecture. The stones were used to build the steps of Kamei-in. Suzuki was censured by the shogunate and committed seppuku

Seppuku

is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies , or as a form of capital punishment...

 over the incident. During this period the temple came to be known as Suzuki-in, but after Nagayori's death the name fell out of use. After the appearance of a mysterious turtle

Turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...

 at Kamei-in, the temple came to be known by its current name, a combination of the kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

 for turtle (亀) and well (井). Noted early 20th century tanka

Waka (poetry)

Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature...

poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 Hakushū Kitahara (1885 – 1942) lived in the monk's quarters of Kamei-in in 1916.

Mama Well

The Mama Well of Kamei-in is referenced in a poem in the Man'yōshū. Takahashi Mushimaro

Takahashi Mushimaro

was a Japanese poet of the early 8th century.He was a contemporary of Yamabe no Akahito, Okura and Ōtomo no Tabito, and was known for his poems on travel and a collection of local myths and legends. Little is known about his life...

, a low-ranking court official of the Nara period

Nara period

The of the history of Japan covers the years from AD 710 to 794. Empress Gemmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō . Except for 5 years , when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capital of Japanese civilization until Emperor Kammu established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784...

, wrote in the early 8th century poem On the maiden of Mama of Katsushika:

When I see the well at Mama of Katsushika,

It reminds me of Tekona

Who stood here oft, drawing water.

Related places

• Guhō-ji
• Kamei-in faces the Monument and Shrine of Tekona, a temple featured in Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
  One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
  One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is a series of ukiyo-e prints begun and largely completed by the Japanese artist Hiroshige . The prints were first published in serialized form in 1856–59, with Hiroshige II completing the series after Hiroshige's death...
  
  

Transportation

Kamei-in is located in the Mama District of Ichikawa. It is accessible by foot from the Kōnodai Station

Konodai Station

is a railway station operated by Keisei Electric Railway's Keisei Main Line located in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture Japan. It is 16.4 kilometers from the terminus of the Keisei Main Line at Keisei-Ueno Station.-History:...

 on Keisei Electric Railway

Keisei Electric Railway

The is a major private railway in Chiba and Tokyo, Japan. The name Keisei is the combination of the kanji 京 from and 成 from , which the railways main line connects. The combination uses different readings than the ones used in the city names. The railway's main line runs from Tokyo to Narita and...

's Keisei Main Line.