The Biography of Tokumitsu Kanada

By William and Yoko Trotter

When Tokumitsu Kanada was alive, he once admonished his followers when they called him Founder, by saying, Im not a founder of our teaching. The founder is God. He was a very humble person, so if were to call him the founder of our teachings in this biography, he may not be pleased.
However, weas his followerswere saved from our sufferings and were guided by him, so he is unmistakably the founder of this teaching. We do not think its impolite to his departed soul to refer to him in this way. Also, with our love and respect for him, we his followers dont know how else to refer to him other than as the founder of this teaching. There are some religious leaders who refer to themselves as so-called founders and behave as though they are above others. Therefore, we would like to acknowledge that by calling him Founder it is not our intention to confuse him with some of these people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503518711

William

"Tokumitsu Kanada had astounding psychic abilities through which he saved many thousands of people from their pain and suffering, often taking sicknesses on his own body. His was an extraordinary life. Nevertheless he was an extremely humble man who believed that everything was his teacher and truly lived for others."

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Copyright © 2015 by William and Yoko Trotter.

First edition published in Japanese on December 1, 1963

Published by: Shizen-sha

Second printing January 4, 1993

Written by: The Publishing Team, Shizen-sha

Translated by: Yoko O. Trotter

Edited by: William T. H. Trotter

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014920741

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5035-1869-8

Softcover   978-1-5035-1870-4

eBook   978-1-5035-1871-1

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Rev. date: 01/26/2015

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 — His Childhood and Youth

1. From birth to apprenticeship

2. A desperate decision to train at Mount Inunaki

3. Isokichi witnesses Emperor Meiji’s spiritual form

4. The Kanada family history

5. Isokichi wins a prize in a business exhibition

6. Isokichi builds his parents a retirement home

7. Isokichi’s trip to Tokyo

Chapter 2 — Training during his prime years

1. Experiencing a business

2. Reverend Kanada’s family life

Reverend Kanada and Mount Koya

1. A training visit to Mount Koya

2. Religious training at Mount Koya

3. Causing the stars to descend at midnight in front of the mausoleum

4. Reverend Kanada was a psychic since birth

5. He discovered and dug up stone Buddhas and other statues

A friendship with Ryoseki-ni Nakamura

1. The meeting of Ryoseki-ni Nakamura

2. A brief summary of Ryoseki-ni

3. The first time Reverend Kanada visited Kongo-ji Temple

4. Reverend Kanada’s merciful state of mind

5. A holy fire lit by Reverend Kanada

6. Shinjo-ni’s memory of Reverend Kanada

7. Not expecting any return for his deeds

Reverend Kanada’s religious life

1. As an organizer for the Furuki-jizo and Kannon celebrations

2. A pilgrimage to 88 places on Shikoku Island

3. A thoroughgoing state of mind to study

4. The enlightenment about paradise

Chapter 3 — The early part of his period of religious activity (From about 1897 to 1911)

1. The invention of the round whetstone

2. The story about a sennin on Mount Makinoo

3. Reverend Kanada cures leprosy

4. A bad tumor

5. Suspected by the authorities

6. A business without any self-interest

7. Reverend Kanada refuses to teach about the stock exchange

8. Reverend Kanada’s spiritual ability and Mount Shigi

Chapter 4 — The Last Period of His Religious activities(From about 1912 until his death on January 4, 1919)

1. His motivation to concentrate on preparations and then propagation

Propagation at Tokiwa Street

2. About Reverend Tokuharu Miki

3. Propagating the teachings

4. The establishment of the kyokai

5. A dream of Emperor Meiji’s illness

6. The declaration of the teachings and God’s law

7. Beginning to call Reverend Kanada Founder

8. A pioneer in taking psychic pictures

9. The correct way for husband and wife

10. A brazier in the shape of a raccoon

11. Welcoming an enemy with gratitude

12. A propagation trip to the Chugoku district

13. Reverend Kanada builds Ichikishima-hime Shrine on Mount Sigi

14. A Mioshie for farming

The Kyokai at Nakamichi

15. The completion of the building

16. The miracle of the posts

17. The Ancestors’ Day and birthday services

18. A large special military training exercise

19. Leisure during a busy time

20. Understanding the meaning of Komyo-shingon

21. The trip to Yamagata

22. Understanding the feelings of the people who lost the war

23. The uniqueness of Reverend Kanada’s teachings

24. The Ofurikae prayer

Various testimonies from Mioshies

25. A guardian deity was enshrined

26. The spiritual eye to see a dishonest act

27. To foresee the reconciliation of a marriage

28. The blessing of having a child

29. Saving a child’s life

30. A famous actor and the mystery of the rented house

31. Reverend Kanada studies Jiun-sonja

32. The return of Reverend Tokuharu Miki

33. An example of Reverend Kanada’s ability to see through things

The trip to Takachiho

34. Propagation in the Chugoku District and a visit to the Itsukushima Shrine

35. Visiting Hakozaki-hachiman Shrine and a bronze statue of Nichiren Shonin

36. A funny story of buying ayus (sweet fish) and making sashimi

37. Erected tanka monuments at the Kirishima Shrine and Takachiho Peak

38. An invisible way to worship

39. A gratitude prayer for the ritual of Ofurikae upon visiting the Ise Shrine

40. The diary of visiting the Ise and Kumano Shrines

41. Reverend Kanada and his disciples

The kyokai in Tomagahata

42. The new church wasn’t built

43. Reverend Kanada knew when he was going to die

44. Reverend Kanada’s belief

45. Trying to raise a nature child

46. Reverend Kanada’s sickness

47. He completely gave himself up

48. Reverend Kanada and Reverend Tokuharu Miki

49. The disciples understood the teachings in their own ways

50. Reverend Tokuharu Miki follows Reverend Kanada by giving up everything

51. Reverend Kanada’s will

52. Reverend Kanada and Reverend Tokuharu Miki worship at Ise Shrine

53. Reverend Tokuharu Miki receives the power to perform Ofurikae

54. Believing in the sun as God

55. A Mioshie initiation ceremony

56. Ryoseki-ni Nakamura visited Reverend Kanada’s bedside

57. Reverend Kanada’s death

Afterword

A Glossary of Commonly-Used Words

Image%2002.jpg

Reverend Kanada’s painting of Fudo Myo-o (a god that removes evil)

Image%2003.jpg

Reverend Kanada’s calligraphies: right - Kobodaishi, left - Komyo-shingon, a Buddhist Mantra

Image%2004.jpg

Reverend Kanada’s paintings of Kobodaishi

Foreword

When Tokumitsu Kanada was alive, he once admonished his followers when they called him Founder, by saying, I’m not a founder of our teaching. The founder is God. He was a very humble person, so if we’re to call him the founder of our teachings in this biography, he may not be pleased.

However, we—as his followers—were saved from our sufferings and were guided by him, so he is unmistakably the founder of this teaching. We do not think it’s impolite to his departed soul to refer to him in this way. Also, with our love and respect for him, we his followers don’t know how else to refer to him other than as the founder of this teaching. There are some religious leaders who refer to themselves as so-called founders and behave as though they are above others. Therefore, we would like to acknowledge that by calling him Founder it is not our intention to confuse him with some of these people.

Before we began to write his biography, we asked his departed soul to give us guidance, and we were told, If you are going to write my biography, you shouldn’t write just the good side about me without writing about the bad side! You have to write about me as I was. However, as over 40 years have already passed since his death, it was quite difficult to collect all the facts. We can say that we made our best effort by collecting them from some of the existing records and other information we gathered from people who knew about him.

Although he told us to write about his bad side as well, but we couldn’t find anything negative about him, so we may not have followed his guidance. Also, because this is his biography we didn’t intentionally write about mystical things. I would like to mention that you may find some of the things written in this book that are strange or mystical: they are recorded here because they are the facts.

This biography shows that he was given a spiritual gift that he demonstrated since he was young and developed through his tireless training. Furthermore, he was merciful, in the same way that many excellent religious leaders have been. However, his merciful personality was a part of his timid personality. He once said, I can’t say ‘no’ if someone asks me to do something, since I am living here as a human being. We think this explains his reputation well. After finishing his biography, we felt that it may have been better if he had insisted on his opinion a little more. However, he was unable to do this because of his personality and reputation, so we can’t criticize him for this.

Throughout his life, Reverend Kanada made many calligraphies and paintings. One of his framed calligraphies reads: bansho-waga-shi (all things in the universe are my teacher). We presume that he liked this phrase, because there are many similar words written by him. We don’t know who originated this phrase, but we doubt that anyone else aside from Reverend Kanada truly practised it in this way. He didn’t have any teacher from whom he could receive training. You will discover from this biography that throughout his entire lifetime he truly sought the Truth, as though all things in the universe were his teacher. The reason he made many calligraphies about this phrase is that it had a much deeper emotional meaning to him than just a personal preference. We can begin to understand his personality from this.

His enlightenment started from his belief in Kobo-daishi, with the posthumous name of Kukai (774–835), who was the well-known and respected Buddhist priest that founded Shingon-shu. However, when Tokumitsu Kanada began to teach his teaching from his enlightenment, it wasn’t through the Buddhism of Kobo-daishi, but from Shintoism. Some people may wonder why he chose this way. This question arises because we try to understand religion from a formal point of view. However, if we think about the function of religion, then we know the answer for us is to find the Truth and to be guided and saved from our suffering. Therefore, if a religion demonstrates this essence, we don’t have to be caught up in thinking about it in a formal way.

To begin with, Reverend Kanada started to train himself to find the Truth. This Truth wasn’t the truth of one religion or where he felt he belonged: it was to elucidate the Truth of the universe. These things are explained in various places in this biography.

Therefore, his teachings are concerned with what this world consists of and the principles of the formation of the universe to elucidate Great Nature (Mother Nature). He naturally explains clearly what human beings are and how they should live. That is why his teaching is not just an explanation of his view of the world or his view of life. He sought to learn and teach the Truth, without attachments to any specific religions. We are going to seek the Truth by following his devotion in seeking this.

This past September 20, 1963, was his centennial birthday celebration. In December, we are going to complete the main hall of a shrine that was his desire when he was alive, and we are planning to have the enshrinement at the main altar. We are very grateful that we were able to publish his biography in the fall of this memorable year.

We give our sincere appreciation to the late Tokuma Oomori from the Akatsuki Kyokai (where his teaching is taught and ceremonies held); the chief priest at the Kongoji Temple; Shinjoni Nakamura, the priest at the Inunaki yama-shichipo-ryoji Temple; Ruhoni Tojo and Kyuhei Asaka in the city of Sakai and others who provided us with various dates and information.

The Publishing Team,

Shizen-sha,

November 1963

Chapter 1

His Childhood and Youth

From birth to apprenticeship

The year of 1863 was a violent one. A revolution to restore the imperial ruler (the Meiji Restoration) was coming to a head. A group called Tenchu-gumi—royal supporters of the Emperor—had taken a sea route, landing in Sakai and then Yamato.

In the autumn of that year—September 20, 1863—Tokumitsu Kanada was born. His childhood name was Tokumatsu Wada. His father was Tokuhei Wada and his mother was Mine Wada. The Wada family were known to be descendants of the Kusunoki family, a famous samurai family.

Although Tokumatsu was born at Kyuhou-ji, Waza, Yao-machi, Naka-kawachi-gun, in the Osaka Prefecture, his family moved shortly after he was born to 2-Ayano-cho-nishi in the city of Senshu-sakai. He was brought up there, and he is likely to have considered the city of Sakai to be his hometown.

Tokumatsu was the eldest of seven children. The next three children were sons: Kusumatsu, Masujiro and Shigejiro. Following this were three daughters: Ei, Tefu and Tsune. His parents evidently loved all these six children very much, but for an unknown reason they showed little love for Tokumatsu. In fact, they appeared to actively dislike him.

Perhaps for this strange reason, he was not sent to public school when he reached the age of attendance. In 1871 there were 15,862 basic terakoya (public schools) around Japan. Most children went to one of these, when they five or six years of age, to learn reading and writing. However, Tokumatsu wasn’t allowed to attend. Instead, at age eight he was sent to work as an apprentice at the nearby ironworks, which were owned by Kyuhei Asaka. At the time, children needed to be at least eleven years old to work, so his parents falsified his age. (This information was obtained from a seventh generation descendant of Hisahei Asaka.)

A normal child would have considered this treatment to be unfair and would have developed an embittered mind or, at the very least, held a grudge against their parents. Instead, Tokumatsu felt a genuine love for his parents and wanted to help them as much as he could. This was one of many differences from his peers, and adults usually concluded that he was different to children his age whenever they observed him talking, acting or even playing.

When Tokumatsu went to work as an apprentice with the Asaka family he was renamed Isokichi. The custom of the time was for shop boys or apprentices to have kichi added as a suffix to their name; head clerks, by comparison, had the suffix shichi added to their names. Isokichi (the young Reverend Kanada) was favoured by his master and everywhere he went the master would call: Isokichi, come with me!

One day, Isokichi went to a temple with his master, who wanted to listen to a Buddhist priest. This was the Chogen-ji Temple, the Asaka family’s devotional temple. Isokichi hadn’t gone there to listen to the priest, so he was waiting outside the front door. Although he wasn’t really listening, he overheard the priest inside say: A long time ago, Kobo-daishi went to Mount Iya and tested his belief. He jumped from a high water fall well over 30 meters (over 98 feet) by praying and asking God, ‘If my life is useful to help other people then please save my life, if not, please take my life away immediately.’ But he didn’t have even a single scratch.

Isokichi was surprised and deeply impressed by this story. From that moment, he had a sure belief that he could do anything with faith. He decided that because Kobo-daishi was a human being and yet could do this, he could trust in God. Isokichi made a decision to do the same as the great man in this story and help humankind. Although he was only eight years old at the time, he held on to this faith throughout his entire life.

Around the same time, Isokichi went to the Chogen-ji Temple with his master as usual, where he saw a tiny raccoon in front of the temple. This raccoon wasn’t of the usual kind: it was the so-called mame-danuki (a tiny raccoon dog). The naked human eye isn’t able to see this tiny animal, which often goes near human habitation undetected. Isokichi sincerely said to the raccoon, Wait here until I come back, and then went into the temple. About two hours later, Isokichi was ready to go home and went to the gate. The raccoon was crouching at the same place, waiting for him. So Isokichi said to the raccoon, Okay, you can go now and the raccoon ran off. This incident confirmed to Isokichi that anything is possible when he put his mind into things with a strong belief. From this experience he also started to learn the difference between human beings and animals.

Over time, Isokichi continued to deepen the faith that came naturally to him. He was seeking a faith that wasn’t from a specific traditional religion, so he went to temples or shrines whenever he had the opportunity. This was because he was seeking the Truth that is beyond existing religions. He had decided to learn the mysteries of the world, which could not be done by following just one religion.

Although he was unloved by his parents, his master loved him well, and often chose him for important chores in the village. Whenever Isokichi went to carry out these chores, he would take a detour to pray at the village shrine. After some time of doing this, he began to experience strange things. Once, when he was standing on a bridge on the way to do his chores, he found that—without any apparent reason—he couldn’t move his legs. In response, he prayed toward the sky, thinking about the mysterious phenomenon in this world. Soon he noticed that he could walk again. He spoke to himself, saying Oh, I can walk again, thank you God, and hurried to his master’s house. He thought he would be late because he had stayed on the bridge so long, but he had returned before the other store boys who left at the same time. This didn’t happen just once or twice, it happened often, so he felt as though something very strange was occurring.

He began to understand things that even adults couldn’t comprehend. One day, he went back to visit his parents after being away from them for some time. A friend of his father’s, who ran a mine in Izumo, was visiting. Isokichi heard this guest complain that he was having difficulty because there were no more deposits in the mine. Isokichi picked up a piece of paper beside him and showed his father’s guest where he could find deposits by illustrating it for him. Of course, no one believed him, as he was only a child. Nevertheless, when the guest later returned to the mine the deposits were exactly where Isokichi had illustrated them, and everyone who learned this was astonished.

You may wonder why Isokichi’s parents didn’t love him. Sometimes, if parents love their children too much or expect too much from them, the children develop a weaker constitution and their character becomes weaker or they become delinquent; such results are entirely contrary to their parents’ expectations. Children are God’s children, so the more that parents love their children with their emotions, treating them as belongings, the more unfortunate the children can become. From this perspective, it was fortunate that Isokichi’s parents didn’t love him. His parents were probably not comfortable in loving him the same way as the other children because from a very young age he was already becoming a great person, and was different from the other children. They probably felt confronted by his imperturbable nature. His childhood experiences and his mature reactions to these resemble the kinds of things that have happened to heroes or to great people when they were young. The greatness of Reverend Kanada is more impressive when we realize that his parents didn’t love him at all.

Although young Isokichi didn’t even go to the local primary school, he was not an illiterate young shop boy. He embodied a practical branch of learning from daily life. Moreover, fortunately for him his young master, Kyuhei Asaka, was a scholar of the Chinese classics. Even though he was young himself, Kyuhei Asaka taught his employees Japanese history and introduced them to various Chinese books. So, unexpectedly, young Isokichi was given an opportunity to study. At that time, the shop boys were under strict rules, so this wasn’t easy for him, but he was able to study while also working hard. Furthermore, his master loved him very much and afforded him some concessions. For these reasons, he must have led a more enjoyable life than if he had stayed at home.

Nonetheless, his fellow workers kept him at arm’s length. Perhaps the reason for this was that his psychic ability gave him an awareness of the position of people in other rooms. If his fellow workers were wasting time in idle conversation or dawdling when they were out doing chores, he could sense exactly what they did, as though he was there with them. This was too much for them and they tended to respond by drawing away from him.

At some point during his apprenticeship (we are not sure when this next incident occurred), a fire broke out about four or five houses from his master’s house during the day in the middle of summer. Isokichi ran outside when he heard the sound of the fire bell and heard people yelling, Fire, fire! He saw the black smoke coming from a nearby house. The fire was about to reach his master’s house, so he took a broom and climbed up to the neighbor’s roof. The force of the fire became very strong and many sparks were coming toward him. Despite this, he worked very hard to fight the fire, even though he was quite young.

His master’s house was downwind and the fire spread rapidly. His body was as hot as if he was actually burning, and he needed to climb down. Looking down he saw one of the head clerks standing there, so he asked him, from the neighbor’s roof, Please put the ladder up for me.

Despite the emergency situation the head clerk was disengaged and didn’t answer him. So Isokichi pleaded with him, Please put the ladder up for me.

The head clerk then replied, You got up there on your own, so you get down on your own, and he refused to put the ladder up for him.

On the opposite side of the house from where the head clerk was standing, the air was filled with showers of sparks, so Isokichi couldn’t jump down there. He couldn’t jump down in the place where the head clerk was standing because it was too high. He realized that he wasn’t able to move forward or backward and felt a burning sensation on his bare feet. Even without a fire roof tiles are very hot during the summer. Strangely, he didn’t have this burning sensation when he was just thinking about fighting the fire; it only occurred when he thought about himself.

Isokichi was in a terrible situation and had run out of options. He had done his very best, so he decided at that time, Okay I will die right here. So, he fearlessly lay down on the hot roof with his arms and legs spread out. At that moment the wind changed and he escaped from the danger of burning to death. Of course, the neighbor’s house, where he was lying, was safe as well.

Another unusual incident occurred around