Buddhist temple A Buddhist temple or Buddhist monastery is the place of worship for Buddhism, Buddhists, the followers of Buddhism. They include the structures called vihara, chaitya, stupa, wat, khurul and pagoda in different regions and languages. Temples in B ...

of the

Shingon is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asian Buddhism. It is a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism and is sometimes called "Tōmitsu" (東密 lit. "Esoteric uddhismof Tō- ...

sect located in the city of

Shinshiro is a city located in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 44,581 in 17,691 households, and a population density of 89.3 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Shinshiro is located in east-centr ...

Aichi Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Aichi Prefecture has a population of 7,461,111 () and a geographic area of with a population density of . Aichi Prefecture borders Mie Prefecture to the ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Its main image is a statue of Yakushi Nyōrai. The temple is located on the

Mount Hōrai Penglai ( zh, t=蓬萊仙島, l=Penglai Immortal Island) is a legendary land of Chinese mythology. It is known in Japanese mythology as Hōrai and Bồng Lai in Vietnam. McCullough, Helen. ''Classical Japanese Prose'', p. 570. Stanford Univ. P ...

and is accessed by a flight of 1425 steps. The grounds have been designated

Place of Scenic Beauty is a collective term used by the Japanese government's Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties to denote Cultural Properties of JapanIn this article, capitals indicate an official designation as opposed to a simple definition, e.g "Cultural ...

and

Natural Monument A natural monument is a natural or cultural feature of outstanding or unique value because of its inherent rarity, representative of aesthetic qualities, or cultural significance. They can be natural geological and geographical features such as w ...

since 1931. The area is also noted for its population of

Eurasian scops owl The Eurasian scops owl (''Otus scops''), also known as the European scops owl, common scops owl or just scops owl, is a small owl in the typical owl family Strigidae. Its breeding range extends from southern Europe eastwards to southern Siberia a ...

, the prefectural bird of

History

Per the temples own history, it was founded in 702 AD by a holy ascetic, Ryūshū Sennin, who carved statues of Yakushi Nyōrai,

Nikkō Bosatsu is a city in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. , the city's population was 80,239, in 36,531 households. The population density was 55 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Nikkō is a popular destination for Japanese and international to ...

Gakkō Bosatsu Candraprabha (lit. 'Moonlight', zh, 月光菩薩, link=no; pinyin: ''Yuèguāng Púsà''; Rōmaji: ''Gakkō or Gekkō Bosatsu'') is a bodhisattva often seen with Sūryaprabha, as the two siblings serve Bhaiṣajyaguru. Statues of Candrapr ...

, the Jūni Shinshō, Shi-Tennō and other deities out of the living trucks of trees on Mount Hōrai. Prayers at this location cured

Emperor Mommu The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

of an affliction, which led to its official recognition. The temple was rebuilt in the

Kamakura period The is a period of History of Japan, Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the G ...

Minamoto no Yoritomo was the founder and the first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate, ruling from 1192 until 1199, also the first ruling shogun in the history of Japan.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Minamoto no Yoriie" in . He was the husband of Hōjō Masako ...

(who is also credited with building the 1425 stone steps), out of gratitude for sheltering him during the Heiji rebellion.

Adachi Morinaga Adachi Morinaga (安達盛長) (1135–1200) was a Japanese warrior from the Adachi clan who fought for Minamoto no Yoritomo against the Taira. Morinaga had already supported Yoritomo while he lived in exile in Izu province. In 1180, he was sen ...

is also credited with building one of its chapels. The temple suffered from repeated fires during the Kamakura and

Muromachi period The , also known as the , is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ...

s, so most written records have been destroyed; however, the

archaeological record The archaeological record is the body of physical (not written) evidence about the past. It is one of the core concepts in archaeology, the academic discipline concerned with documenting and interpreting the archaeological record. Archaeological t ...

in the form of many pottery shards and

sutra mound A is an archaeological site where sūtras were buried underground. In Japanese Buddhism, it is a type of good deed, and was done as a type of puja. Examples of sutra mounds include the Katsuragi 28 Shuku in the Kansai region of Japan. Descr ...

s indicates that the temple existed as a center of both Buddhism and folk religion into the

Sengoku period The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...

. However,

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods and regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: ...

was hostile to the temple, and confiscated most of its estates, allowing it a ''

kokudaka refers to a system for determining land value for taxation purposes under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo-period Japan, and expressing this value in terms of ''koku'' of rice. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Koku"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 5 ...

'' of only 300 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

'', whereupon the temple fell into rapid decline. Hōrai-ji recovered considerably during the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, and it was especially favored by

Odai no Kata Odai no Kata (於大の方, 1528–1602), also known as Dai, Daishi, and Denzûin, was a Japanese noble lady from the Sengoku period. She was the mother of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. She was the daughter of Mizuno Tadama ...

(

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

's mother). Under the

Tokugawa Iemitsu was the third ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada with Oeyo, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lady Kasuga was his wet nurse, who acted as his political adviser and was at the ...

, its revenues were increased to 1350 ''koku'' and the

Hōraisan Tōshō-gū is a Shinto shrine located in the city of Shinshiro, Aichi, Shinshiro, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. It enshrines the deified first Shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu. History The Hōraisan Tōshō-gū was established by Shōgun Tokug ...

was built in 1651. The temple belonged to both the Shingon and the

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Dharma Flower School (天台法華宗, ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just ''Hokkeshū''), is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition with significant esoteric elements that was officially established in Japan in 806 by t ...

sects, and became a popular side-trip for travelers on the Tōkaidō. The separation of Buddhism from Shinto and the hostile attitude of the new

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...

towards Buddhism dealt a heavy blow to Hōrai-ji, and with the opening of the

Tōkaidō Main Line The Tōkaidō Main Line () is one of the most important railway corridors in Japan, connecting the major cities of Tokyo and Kobe via Shizuoka (city), Shizuoka, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka. The line, with termini at Tokyo Station, Tokyo and Kōbe St ...

railway, the number of pilgrims was reduced. The Shinto

was separated from the Buddhist temple, and much of Mount Hōrai became national forest. In 1905, the temple was made a subsidiary of Hōrin-ji in Kyoto which amalgamated the Tendai portion of the temple back into the Shingon portion. The Main Hall burned down in 1915, and could not be rebuilt until 1974.

Cultural Properties

Important cultural properties

Hōrai-ji Sanmon

The

Sanmon A or is the most important mon of a Japanese Zen Buddhist temple, and is part of the Zen '' shichidō garan'', the group of buildings that forms the heart of a Zen Buddhist temple.JAANUS It can be often found in temples of other denominations ...

of Hōrai-ji is a two-story

Niōmon is the Japanese name of a Buddhist temple gate guarded by two wooden warriors called Niō (lit. Two Kings). The gate is called Heng Ha Er Jiang (哼哈二将) in China and Geumgangmun (금강문) in Korea. The two statues are inside the two po ...

gate is one of its few surviving structures from the Edo period. It was built in 1651 as a donation from

Shogun , officially , was the title of the military aristocracy, rulers of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor of Japan, Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, exc ...

. The building is built of

zelkova ''Zelkova'' (from the Georgian language, Georgian ''dzelkva'', 'stone pillar') is a genus of six species of deciduous trees in the elm family Ulmaceae, native to southern Europe, and southwest and eastern Asia. They vary in size from shrubs (''Ze ...

wood and is painted vermillion. It has a copper shingle roof in the ''irimoya-zukuri''-style. The gate is decorated near the eaves with a bamboo and tiger motif on the front, peony and lion motif on the back, waves and rhinoceros motif on the east and clouds and '' kirin'' motif on the west. A major repair was carried out in 1988. The building has been protected as an

Important Cultural Property of Japan An The term is often shortened into just is an item officially classified as Tangible Cultural Property by the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) and judged to be o ...

since 1953.

Gallery

Horaiji Temple (2007.11.25).jpg, Hondō Houraijisan02.jpg, Hōrai-ji approach

References

External links

Aichi Tourist Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Horai-ji Buddhist temples in Aichi Prefecture Places of Scenic Beauty Natural monuments of Japan Shingon Buddhism Buildings and structures in Shinshiro Mikawa Province Important Cultural Properties of Aichi Prefecture Bettoji Temples