Documents

Wakan sansai zue, vol. 71 (Wakasa): Kuin-ji and the 800-year nun

Language

Japanese

Read from

Terajima Ryoan 寺島良安, Wakan sansai zue 和漢三才圖會, vol. 71 (日本 若狭), entry 空印寺 under 神社佛閣名所; NDL Digital Collections pid 898185 (1901 reprint, vols 53 to 71), frame 200, printed p. 1154, right-hand page; the same text is in pid 898174 (1890 print), frame 5

Reading

transcribed from the page image

Translation

ours

Retrieved

18 October 2026

The Wakan sansai zue is an illustrated Japanese encyclopedia by the Osaka physician Terajima Ryoan; Togashi Akira dates it to 1712. The volume on Wakasa lists the province’s shrines and temples, and Kuin-ji is one entry. The print carries reading marks and furigana, left out here. The text after the triangle (△按) is Ryoan’s own comment.

Translation

Kuin-ji, in Obama. The cave with the wooden statue of the Yao Bikuni. The main image is En no Gyoja. There is an inner sanctuary (oku-no-in).

It is handed down that long ago a woman monk lived here. She was eight hundred years old, yet she was youthful and beautiful, like a girl of fifteen or sixteen. So she is called the Yao Bikuni.

Note: Not only the great deity of Onyu (lasted so long); this nun also kept to several hundred years and was still young. Does this not truly fit the name of Wakasa Province? (The first character of Wakasa, 若, means “young”.) Some say she ate a mermaid. That is not so.

Notes

The first line lists what the temple has: the cave with the nun’s wooden statue, En no Gyoja as the main image, and an inner sanctuary (奥院, oku-no-in). The last sentence, 或謂食人魚、然者非也, is the one that matters: some say she ate a mermaid, and the author says no. 然者非也 can also be read “if so, it is wrong”; either way he rejects it. 唯不遠敷大明神 is printed in that order; we read it as 不唯, the usual order for “not only Onyu Daimyojin”; the entry does not say what that deity is credited with, so the words in brackets in the translation are our fill-in. The wordplay is on 若 (young) in 若狹 (Wakasa); that is our reading of 若年 and 若狹國名目相合. Togashi Akira’s table (Koshokyo 43, p. 112, no. 8) paraphrases this entry in modern Japanese as “これ人魚を食いしに因る”, “this is because she ate a mermaid”, which is the opposite of what the page says; we follow the page.