Chujo-hime

Meaning: Living Buddha, Piety, Embroidery, Weaving, Goodness

She is sometimes called the Japanese Cinderella. Worshipped for her filial piety, a very important moral in Japan and China because the family is the building block of society. She is said to be a royal princess. It is also said that her parents appealed to the Kannon (Kannon Bosatsu) to be granted a daughter in exchange for one of their lives. When Chujo-hime was three her mother died.

Her father re-marries and her step-mother orders her to be taken into the mountains and abandoned to die. One reason given is she remains at home and makes Buddhist sutras for her mother’s salvation which earns her the enmity of her step-mother.

Either way she is said to have escaped her step-mother and becomes a nun at Taima-dera in Nara. She comes to be known as a living Buddha. She is credited for inventing embroidery as well as weaving the Lotus Thread- Taima Mandala, depicting the cosmography of the Pure Land.