Enshoji Temple Stone Monument

...A type of stone tower from the Middle Ages. Also called a slate stone stupa. The first one to be seen was in 1227 in Konan-cho, Osato-gun, Saitama Prefecture. They were made in large numbers during the Northern and Southern Courts and Muromachi periods, and disappeared in the early 17th century. The Kanto region is the most well-known and numerous, but they are distributed throughout the country, from Hokkaido to the Satsunan Islands, and slate stone monuments with distinctive features are erected in each region. About 30,000 Kanto region slates are known to date, and they are made of bluestone (chlorite schist) from Chichibu. Taking advantage of the stone's characteristics of being easy to peel off into thin plates and easy to process, many of them have excellent shapes and beautiful colors, such as a triangular head with two groove-like lines engraved on it and the main Buddha depicted in Sanskrit characters and images, and have therefore been popular with writers and others since the Edo period. ...

*Some of the terminology used in reference to the Enshoji Tablet is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…中世の石塔の一種。板石塔婆ともいう。埼玉県大里郡江南町にある嘉禄3年(1227)のものが初見で，南北朝･室町時代に盛んに作られ，17世紀初頭に姿を消す。関東地方のものがもっともよく知られ，また数も多いが，北海道から薩南諸島まで，全国に分布し，地域によって特色のある板碑が造立されている。関東地方のものは，現在までに約3万基が知られ，秩父産の青石(緑泥片岩)で作られ，薄く板状にはがれやすく加工もしやすい，という石材の特色を生かし，頭部を三角形とし，2本の溝状の線を刻み，梵字や画像で主尊の仏を表現するなど，形態的にすぐれ色も美しいものが多く，そのため，江戸時代から文人などに好まれてきた。…

※「円照寺板碑」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報