M W ) 'ANTOKUJI AVE,, once a high-profile ancestral temple of the Tokugawa family, is today all but forgotten. When remembered at all, it is merely as the lesser of the two supposedly anomalous temples (enkiridera ,Y2J#) that operated during the Edo period, the other and more famous being Tokeiji AW E, in North Kamakura. In a social context where women had no legally recognized ability to initiate divorce, these convents offered a state-sanctioned mechanism whereby women might, subject to various stipulations, sever their marital ties. While an outgrowth of the medieval tradition of religious institutions' providing asylum to those hounded by their enemies, this mechanism operated independently of the convents' religious function. Particularly in the case of Mantokuji, the capacity to negotiate divorces on behalf of women who sought the temple's aid rested in large measure on its special relationship with the shogunal line.1 Moreover, the negotiations for securing divorces were handled by lay officials attached to the temple rather than its nuns. Given the above, the present study focuses on the hows and whys of temple-divorce suits rather than the religious nature and/or function of these divorce temples.