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The Sengoku period (1467 –1600) can be translated literally as the Warring States period. As its name suggests, it was a time of several civil wars, some of which of course took place in Kyushu as well.

The lord of the Takachiho region at the time was Mitai Echizen no Kami Chikatake. Chikatake’s sister Sonohime had worked in Kyoto for a senior regent of Japan, Fujiwara (Kujo) Tanemichi, and returned to Takachiho after becoming pregnant with Tanemichi’s child. Later, as per Chikatake’s wishes, Sonohime was married into the Jushin no Kouroki family. Her baby’s biological father, Tanemichi, both served as senior regent and chef adviser to the emperor and was the head of the Fujiwara family, the most powerful family in Japan for years until 1534. Because he was the child of the most powerful person in Japan at the time, the Kouroki family took great care of the baby boy named Kouroki Sanetane.

It was at about this time that a warrior known as Yoshimura Shikubu Taneo (Tanekazu) built a castle between the villages of Kamino and Tabaru. As Sanetane came of age, he began to serve the warrior Taneo who he helped in building Genbu castle. The lord of the castle, Taneo named his legitimate child Yoshimura Soemon Tanetomo and appointed Sanetane as Tanetomo’s caretaker. When Sanetane came of age, he succeeded his father as the lord of the castle and Taneo entered the priesthood to become a Buddhist monk, henceforth known as Yoshimura Dokyunyudo. Sanetane was also a deeply religious person. He built a hermitage in Sugeki, Kamino village and became a Buddhist monk, after which he was known by the name of Syaku Shozen, or Shozenbo, for the remainder of his life.

On March 28th, 1578, Genbu castle was attacked and fell at the hand of Otomo Sorin. A devout Catholic, Sorin believed Christ to be the one and only true god and believed the worship of Japanese gods and the Buddha to be heresy, which was the prevailing belief among Catholics at the time, and thus ordered that Buddhist temples and shrines be burned. When Sorin set the Ryusenji temple afire, amazingly one jizo statue in the main temple managed to survive the fire. Today the statue is famous for being a fire prevention statue. In this way, the temples and shrines of the East and West Usuki-gun area lost their many treasures in the fires. Dokyunyudo’s son Tanetomo and his wife, their retainers, and villagers were all killed in the civil war as well, who Dokyunyudo and Shozenbo subsequently buried out of respect to the fallen.

Years later, when Dokyunyudo’s second son (Tanetomo’s younger brother) came of age, he built a new temple called “Shomyosan Shonenji”. This is the origin of Shonenji temple. Shozenbo became the first head priest of the temple, followed by Dokyunyudo and then Tanetomo’s brother, Dosho. The temple has remained ever since, for the next almost 440 years.