, is a

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- ...

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

temple in Kasai,

Hyōgo Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Hyōgo Prefecture has a population of 5,469,762 () and a geographic area of . Hyōgo Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the east, Osaka Prefecture to th ...

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 mountain name ('' sangō'') is . Emperor Shōmu ordered its construction in 745 (the 17th year of the Tenpyō era) at the request of Gyōki, a Buddhist priest.

History

According to the temple records, the priest Gyōki received an oracle from a

shrine A shrine ( "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred space">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...: ''escri ...

, , instructing a temple to be built on these grounds. Gyōki took the request to Emperor Shōmu, who then ordered the construction of Sagami-ji. When finished in 745, it was named ''Sagami'' after the oracle's origins. Inscriptions on temple plaques record later visits from various

emperors 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 rule ...

and ''

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

s'', including ''shōgun''

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 ...

. The building was badly damaged in the Heiji Rebellion of 1159, and later rebuilt. The main temple was burnt down in conflicts during 1578, and was not rebuilt until the ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

'' of Himeji, Honda Tadamasa, agreed to aid the Ikeda clan in its reconstruction.

Architecture

Images

File:Sagamiji01s3200.jpg, Rōmon File:Sagamiji02s3200.jpg, Entrance File:Sagamiji07s3200.jpg, Courtyard File:Sagamiji05s3200.jpg, The

shōrō The two main types of bell tower in Japan The or is the bell tower of a Buddhist temples in Japan, Buddhist temple in Japan, housing the temple's . It can also be found at some Shinto shrines which used to function as temples (see article ' ...

(belfry) File:Sagami Temple 2600px.jpg, Shōrō closeup File:Sagamiji04s3200.jpg, The

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

s of the '' tahōtō'' File:Sagamiji08s3200.jpg, Main temple path

External links

Buddhist temples in Hyōgo Prefecture Important Cultural Properties of Japan Pagodas in Japan Shingon Buddhism 8th-century establishments in Japan Kōyasan Shingon temples Jingū-ji 745 establishments Religious buildings and structures completed in the 740s Sumiyoshi shrines Bettoji Temples Hyogo Prefecture designated tangible cultural property {{Sumiyoshi Faith