Yubizuka

In feudal times, Denzuin was known as one of the three greatest temples in Edo (Tokyo), alongside Zōjō-ji and Kan’ei-ji, but today it is not as popular as the other two. Still, the temple is a nice place and there are a few interesting monuments. In the small garden, for instance, there stands a surreal bronze sculpture of a hand holding the wrist of the other arm, which is doing a thumbs-up. But why?

The monument is called Yubizuka (“finger mound”), but it is not a mound where severed fingers are buried. Rather, it is simply a monument commemorating a master of finger-pressure—or shiatsu, in Japanese.

Yubizuka was donated to the temple by Tokujirō Namikoshi, a shiatsu celebrity known as “the only Japanese who massaged Marilyn Monroe.” In 1955, he founded the only shiatsu school in Japan, located adjacent to the temple, which was the connection that brought this somewhat bizarre sculpture here.