The next day after the day when we had marked my mother's 80th birthday, we visited the family graves, a part of which are shown in the picture below.
I came from a long line of Buddhist monks, but the monks hadn't been permitted to get married until fairly recently. The monks were single until 100 or 200 years ago. It means that those monks had no descendants, so their graves have been honored by successive temple masters. The picture shows the graves of the monks who had lived more than 300 years ago in the temple and my original house at the same time. If the monk of each grave had worked as the temple master for 30 years, the grave to the left in the pictures would be supposed to have been built about 500 years ago. To my surprise, the names of the monks are recorded. I wondered what they and their lives were like.
(Vocabulary)
come from a long line of ～の家系である
until recently 最近まで
a temple master （寺の）住職
successive 歴代の
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