St. Bondage

One painfully, BEASTLY hot day, I was scuttling along from shade puddle to shade puddle on my way back to Kanamachi Station, and I happened to glance through the gate of a random temple I was passing. Inside, I spotted this!

This saint had to have some obscure specialty, like the Wart Curing Jizo or the Scrub Brush Shrine, and indeed, he did not disappoint! Turns out, this particular Jizo-san does nothing less than save people from dire predicaments.

The question is…why? And therein lies an excellent tale!

According to the temple literature, a long time ago in Ye Olde Japan, a cloth merchant’s apprentice was lugging a cartload of cloth over the mountains to his boss’s warehouse. It was a dreadfully hot summer day, and he’d been pulling that heavy load since before dawn, so when he spotted a shady temple by the river, he thought he’d sneak off the road and rest his eyes for just a moment. Of course (you see where this is heading), soon he was snoring.

When he woke up, it was long after noon. He leapt to his feet, knowing he’d be in big trouble for being so late, but soon discovered that he was in even deeper trouble: while he’d been off in never-never land, all his bolts of cloth had been stolen. He trundled his empty cart all the way to the next town and burst into the local magistrate’s courtroom to report the theft.

In those days, the magistrate was judge, jury and the long arm of the law all rolled into one. After he listened to the panicked employee’s story and heard where the crime had taken place, he sat back in his chair and announced that he knew who had done it, because the area where the unlucky peon had been napping was so remote, there was only one possible thief. He sent out his bailiff to arrest the stone Jizo figure.

Now, the best way to hear how the wily judge trapped the real thief is to spend a few very entertaining minutes watching my friend Otomo-san’s traditional Japanese storytelling performance here…

…but if you just can’t wait, here’s the rest of the story!

The bailiff and his deputies took a wagon to arrest the stone culprit, and returned along the town’s main street with Jizo-san in back, all tied up with the strongest rope they could find. By the time they reached the courthouse, they had quite a following, and all the townspeople crowded in through the door to hear why the judge had arrested their local saint.

The judge was outraged that people had nothing better to do than rubberneck at his prisoner. He ordered the guards to bar the gates and search the crowd to make sure nobody had brought weapons in to disrupt the trial of Jizo-san. As piles of noodles from the noodle vendors, cash boxes from the pawnbrokers, and the carts transporting this and that from here to there were unloaded, the cloth merchant’s apprentice shouted, “There’s my cloth!”

Sure enough—as the judge secretly suspected—the thief hadn’t been able to resist coming in to find out what was going on. The apprentice was reunited with his stolen goods, the real thief was caught, and Jizo-san was set free.

As the story was told and retold over the years, people began to believe that it wasn’t the clever judge who magicked the apprentice out of his tight spot, it was really the Jizo-san who saved his bacon. And maybe he’d save them too! As you can see, old Jizo-san must really have stepped up over the years, because this Shibarare Jizo (“Tied-up Saint”) is still a very popular destination for the luck-challenged.

If you’d like to visit the Shibarare Jizo at Nanzō-in Temple visit my website, The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had.

And just for fun, here are the eleven strangest shrines in Tokyo, with all the inside scoop on the resident gods’ superpowers

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 
The Last Tea Bowl Thief was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for
Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense on Amazon

“A fascinating mix of history and mystery.” —Booklist

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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had