About a kilometer on from Ryozenji, the pilgrim comes to the second of the 88 temples on Shikoku’s pilgrimage route. This is Gokurakuji, the Temple of the Pure Land. The temple has an old connection with a local sect focusing on mountains as places of power and worship, similar to the slightly bet...
You’ve probably seen the little desktop Zen gardens that are sold as a balm to the harried spirit of the modern corporate warrior. A wooden tray, some white sand, a few rocks and a tiny bamboo rake to make all those wonderfully even lines.
In Kyoto you can see the original, the famous karesansui ...
Japan’s oldest Zen training monastery will be familiar to some readers through Lafcadio Hearn’s vivid descriptions in his 1894 book Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan. Founded in 1253 by the Chinese Zen Master Rankei Doryu, Kenchoji is the leading temple in Kamakura, long a center of Zen.
The Zen ...
Yamadera, meaning ‘mountain temple,’ is the popular name of a wonderful Buddhist temple complex in Yamagata prefecture. The great Tendai priest Ennin founded the temple in 860 A.D., and its real name is Ryushaku-ji.
Scattered across the mountainside, the complex includes forty buildings between K...
Though it’s not much to look at after Todaiji, Gangoji has an impressive history. Originally built in Asuka and relocated to Nara when the city became the capital in 710, Gangoji (or at least its predecessor in Asuka) is one of Japan’s oldest Buddhist temples.
Gangoji once had extensive grounds,...
Kongobuji Temple, or the Temple of the Diamond Mountain, is the head temple of Shingon Buddhism, brought to Japan by Kobo Daishi in 805. The name Kongobuji originally referred to the entire Koyasan complex, but in 1593 Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered a new temple built in memory of his mother. In 1868 ...
Kofukuji is another Nara landmark that did a bit of traveling before coming to rest in the city. Serving as both the head temple of the Hosso sect of Buddhism and as the clan temple of the powerful Fujiwara clan, Kofukuji was first built in Yamashina (part of modern Kyoto) in 669, then moved to Fuj...
In 680, Emperor Temmu ordered a great temple to be built as a prayer for the recovery of his ill wife. When he died eight years later, she had regained her health and as the new Empress Jito took on the task of finishing the temple, to be called Yakushiji. It was dedicated in 697, in the short-liv...
Most of Onomichi’s temples have a little real estate, but Senkoji, a symbol of the town, clings to the rock like a barnacle. Scarlet-lacquered and by far the most colorful of the temples you’ll pass in Onomichi, the temple is said to date to the year 806.
Senkoji belongs to the Shingon sect, and ...
In 745 the Emperor Shomu ordered that an enormous statue of the Buddha Vairocana be built to protect the capital of Nara and its people from plagues and natural disasters. It seems his plan failed. The capital was moved to Kyoto just 49 years later and in coming centuries the statue itself, called...
Thought by many to be the Kanto region’s most impressive temple, Kawasaki Daishi is the Head Temple of the Chisan sect of Shingon Buddhism. It is also the third most visited temple in Japan during the New Year Holiday, when almost three million people crowd into the temple grounds over the first fe...
