Fukken Hall Tenkodo Shrine

 

The main gate to Fukken Hall which was built originally in 1868, after the Tojin Yashiki was dismantled.

It was built as a meeting place for Chinese traders from Fujian Province and had a Tenkodo shrine built with it.

The main hall did not survive the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, but the main gate and Tenkodo Shrine did.

Like the other Tenkodo Shrine inside the old Tojin Yashiki compound, this one also enshrines Mazu, the goddess worshipped by Chinese sailors for safety at sea.

For more than forty years after the Dutch were confined to Dejima, the Chinese sailors and traders coming to Nagasaki pretty much were free to go where they wished. Even after the construction of the Tojin Yashiki compound in 1689 the Chinese had more freedom of movement outside the compound, often bought by bribing officials, to visit the various Chinese temples in the town and to conduct business. When the government clamped down in the 1820's rioting ensued.

The previous posts on the shrines of Tojin Yashiki are on the Kannondo Shrine, the Dojindo Shrine, and the other Tenkodo Shrine.

Tenkodo Shrine Tojin Yashiki

 

The Tenkodo was the second of the Chinese shrines built within the walls of Tojin Yashiki, the compound that confined Chinese merchants and sailors in Nagasaki.

It was built in 1736 by shipowners from Nanking resident in the compound and it enshrines Mazu a Goddess of seafaring.

The shrine, along with the many of the other buildings, burned down in the great fire of 1784 and was rebuilt in 1790. The current building dates to 1906.

When the Chinese ships left China they carried a statue of the goddess  Mazu, and when arriving in Nagasaki the statue would be brought into the Tenko-do, a ritual recreated each year during Nagasaki's Lantern Festival.

Also enshrined in the Tenkodo are statues of Guan Yin, the Goddess of mercy, and Guan Yu, a red-faced, bearded, general from the Three Kingdoms period revered as a god of prosperity.

The previous post in this series was the nearby Dojindo Shrine, the first built in Tojin Yashiki.