Origin of the Koa Kannon statue

General Iwane Matsui who commanded the Shanghai Expeditionary Force at the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War built the Koa Kannon statue after retiring from the service in 1940 to honor the officers and men of both China and Japan who fell in battle in the name of consecrating equally both friend and enemy. The statue was made using clay from battlefields, including from the vicinity of Nanjing where Matsui served. On 24 February 1940 the consecration ceremony was performed in the presence of Tessui Oshima, a high-ranking Jodo Buddhist monk from Zojo-ji, and other distinguished figures. Then Matsui moved into a retreat he built nearby and he used to ascend the mountain every morning to give the kannon sutra.

In 1944 another monument was erected called the “Bodhi for the Warriors Who Fell in Battle in the Great Pacific War” which honors all the war dead in the Pacific theater.

Enshrinement of war criminals

On 23 December 1948, six men including Hideki Tojo were executed by the International Military Tribunal of the Far East as “Class A” war criminals alongside Iwane Matsui, and were cremated at Kuboyama Crematorium in Yokohama. The American army disposed of most of the ashes, but one urn was secretly collected up by a group including Miyoshi Tobita, the manager of Kuboyama Crematorium, and Shohei Sanmonji, defense counsel to Kuniaki Koiso, and on 3 May 1949 this urn was carried to the Koa Kannon temple due to its links with Matsui. Right away the head priest Master Ninrei Itami intuitively understood that these were the ashes of the seven war criminals and hid them until he thought the time was right. Finally on 19 April 1959 the stone monument of the seven warriors was erected, with the inscription written personally by former prime minister Shigeru Yoshida, and the ashes were buried underneath it. However, in 1960 one incense container of these ashes was taken to be buried separately at the “Tomb of the Seven Warriors Who Died for their Country” located on Mount Sangane at Nishio, then part of Hazu District, in Aichi Prefecture.

In addition to the stone monument of the seven warriors and the Bodhi monument put up in 1944, at the same site there is now also the “Memorial Stone of the 1,068 Executed Martyrs of the Great Pacific War”, which enshrines Class B and C war criminals who were executed or died in prison^[1] and has been likened to a “little Yasukuni Shrine”.

1971 bombing

On 12 December 1971 the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, an extremist group, tried to blow up the statue of the Koa Kannon, the stone monument of the seven warriors, and the Memorial Stone of the 1,068 Executed Martyrs of the Great Pacific War, which they viewed as symbols of Japanese imperialism. The stone monument of the seven warriors was destroyed but because the fuse was short the other two escaped destruction. The monument which was destroyed was restored afterwards by volunteers.