Buddhist monasteries · The temple and shrine corporations · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Kinpusenji

The temple of Zaō Gongen on the ridge above Yoshino, where the Ōmine range begins.

Its mountain ascetics (yamabushi) walk the Ōmine road south to Kumano, and the head of the Kumano yamabushi is from Onjōji since 1090 [not yet checked against the source]. Shugendō in 1200 has no single head and no two named schools: the names Honzan-ha (Onjōji's line) and Tōzan-ha (Daigoji's Sanbō-in, founded 1115 [not yet checked against the source]) are used from the 15th and 17th centuries on, not in 1200. Yoshino had sheltered Minamoto no Yoshitsune in flight in 1185 and 1186 [not yet checked against the source].

Who holds it

Name
not known for 1 January 1200
Title
Head of Kinpusenji
Family
The house is a dependent of Kōfukuji in Yamato [not yet checked against the source]
Confidence
low

Recollection; no page was read.

Overlord

Kōfukuji's influence in Yamato [not yet checked against the source]

What it holds

  • The Yoshino ridge and temple precinct
  • Mountain lodges along the Ōmine road [not yet checked against the source]

Allies and rivals

Kōfukuji above it; Onjōji's Shōgoin and Daigoji's Sanbōin are the neighbouring Shugendō centres.

How things stand that morning

At peace within Yamato's order under Kōfukuji.

Where the sources disagree

  • The campaign board entry id kinpusenji-yoshino calls it the head of the Shugendō of the Ōmine range. In 1200 there is no single head of Shugendō; Kumano's ascetics have Onjōji's overseer [not yet checked against the source].

Evidence: Recollection and the campaign board; thin.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: A precinct; the Ōmine road is not drawn.

Primary sources for Temple powers (west)

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • Hundred Times Refined Extracts: court annals (late thirteenth century, from court diaries). Short dated annals of the imperial court excerpted from courtiers' diaries, among them the Gyokuyo and the Meigetsuki. Read online
  • Mirror of the East, Anonymous; compiled by officials of the Kamakura shogunate (compiled about 1300 from the shogunate's records, diaries and family documents). The Kamakura house's own chronicle, in daily entries. Read online
  • Jottings of a Fool: an interpretative history of Japan, Jien (慈円) (about 1219 to 1220, revised to about 1223). A history by Kujo Kanezane's brother, head of the Tendai school and the leading churchman of the court, written to explain the fall of the Kujo and the rise of the warriors as the working of principle (dori). Read online
  • Leaves of Jade: the diary of Kujo Kanezane, Kujo (Fujiwara) Kanezane (九條兼實) (1164 to 1200, as a daily diary). The diary of the former regent, Yoritomo's ally at court, who had been driven from power in the Kenkyu purge of 1196 and lived in retirement in 1200. Read online
  • Record of the Bright Moon: the diary of Fujiwara no Teika, Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家) (1180 to 1235, as a daily diary, with gaps). The diary of the poet and courtier, then thirty-eight and a middle-ranking official of the Kujo house. Read online
  • Surviving Documents of the Kamakura Period, Various; collected by Takeuchi Rizo (竹内理三) (documents of 1185 to 1333, collected and printed 1971 to 1997). The collected charters, deeds, court orders, shogunal directives, temple records and land registers of the Kamakura age, printed in date order. Read online
  • The Tale of the Heike, Anonymous; traditionally attributed to Shinano no Zenji Yukinaga, performed and reshaped by blind reciters (early thirteenth century in its first form; the standard Kakuichi text was fixed in 1371). The epic of the Genpei war, in the form the reciters gave it over the century after 1200. Read online

Sources and studies

  1. OMNIA kja regional brief (KJA_BRIEF.md), the campaign's dated traps and realm table
  2. OMNIA board notes and places for area kjw (starting lead only, checked against the sources)
  3. Mikael Adolphson, The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtiers and Warriors in Premodern Japan (background reading, not re-read in this session)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.