Hōshaku-ji Temple: A Shingon Buddhist Temple on Mount Tennōzan
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
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- Country
- Japan
- Primary era
- Unclassified
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Unclassified
- Civilizations
- Unclassified
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Temple
On this page8 sections
History
Hōshaku-ji Temple is a Shingon Buddhist temple in Japan, located in Oyamazaki on the southern slope of Mount Tennōzan. Temple tradition dates its foundation to 724, when the monk Gyōki established it as an imperial prayer temple at the request of Emperor Shōmu. The temple occupies a historically important position on a 270-metre mountain that once marked the boundary between Yamashiro Province, broadly corresponding to present-day Kyoto Prefecture, and Settsu Province, broadly corresponding to present-day Osaka Prefecture.
Origins and Heian-period traditions
The foundation story identifies Gyōki, an eighth-century monk known for temple building and public works, as the temple’s founder. Its imperial patronage is also part of temple tradition rather than independently established history. Hōshaku-ji may have developed from Yamasaki-in, a bridge temple that Gyōki is said to have established at Yamasaki in 731 to administer the Yamasaki Bridge. The proposed continuity between the two institutions remains an interpretation. The nearby site associated with Yamasaki-in has produced some of Japan’s earliest wall-painting fragments.
The temple’s Heian-period history is only partly known. Tradition attributes a revival between 995 and 999 to Jakushō, whose secular name was Ōe no Sadamoto. A tale about Jakushō says that he entered religious life after the death of a beloved woman while he was serving as governor of Mikawa Province. The name Takaradera, meaning “Treasure Temple,” appears in the late-eleventh- or early-twelfth-century work Zoku Honchō Ōjō-den. Fujiwara no Teika’s diary Meigetsuki records that the writer Ōe no Masafusa visited Hōshaku-ji in 1202.
Destruction, reconstruction, and imperial patronage
A fire destroyed Hōshaku-ji in 1232. The Buddhist images now associated with the temple date from after that disaster, while reconstruction continued in subsequent years. During the Nanboku-chō period, the fourteenth-century era of rival Northern and Southern imperial courts, the temple reportedly contained 64 subtemples. In 1388, it again became an imperial prayer temple under Emperor Go-Komatsu, the Northern Court emperor.
Hōshaku-ji also stood within the busy Yamasaki area along the Saigoku Highway and at Yamasaki Post Station. From east to west, Kannon-ji, Hōshaku-ji, and Saikannon-ji formed a sequence of religious sites in the area. Saikannon-ji is now represented by Shio Shrine. The temple’s position on Mount Tennōzan, formerly called Fudaraku-san, also gives it a place as the first site on the Kyoto Six Daikokuten Pilgrimage.
War and later history
Mount Tennōzan was the setting of the 1582 Battle of Yamazaki, fought between the warlords Hashiba Hideyoshi and Akechi Mitsuhide. Hideyoshi established his headquarters at Hōshaku-ji. After the battle, he extensively rebuilt a castle site on the mountain and incorporated the temple into Yamazaki Castle, which was consequently also known as Hōdera Castle. Yamazaki Castle served as Hideyoshi’s residence until he constructed Osaka Castle.
During the 1864 Kinmon Incident, a conflict between the shogunate and anti-shogunate forces, a camp occupied by the imperial-loyalist faction led by Maki Yasuomi and the group known as the Seventeen Loyalists brought a shogunate attack against the temple grounds. The attack left Hōshaku-ji devastated.
In 1915, the novelist and poet Natsume Sōseki visited the area while visiting a villa being built east of Hōshaku-ji by the businessman Kaga Shōtarō. He composed the poem “Living beside Takaradera, what cherry blossoms.” The villa is now the Asahi Group Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art. Hōshaku-ji and associated works are recognized through Important Cultural Property and other cultural-property designations in Kyoto Prefecture and Oyamazaki Town.
Remains
Temple complex
Hōshaku-ji occupies a position midway up the southern slope of Mount Tennōzan in Oyamazaki. The surviving complex includes the main hall, a principal building of the temple, and a three-storied pagoda. A nine-tiered stone pagoda is also among the temple’s designated cultural properties. Together, these buildings and monuments represent the architectural remains of a temple repeatedly rebuilt after the fire of 1232 and later damage.
Buddhist images and sacred objects
The principal image is a wooden standing Eleven-Headed Kannon, a Buddhist bodhisattva associated with compassion. Its multiple heads represent expanded powers of perception and response, and the image is designated an Important Cultural Property. Beside it stands a wooden image of Bishamonten, a guardian deity associated with protection and warfare. The figure is 169.0 centimetres high and dates from the Kamakura period, the era following the Heian period that accompanied the rise of samurai government.
Hōshaku-ji is traditionally said to enshrine Daikokuten, a Buddhist and syncretic deity associated with prosperity, food, and good fortune, whose image was believed to have been brought from India shortly after the temple’s foundation. The temple preserves two separate objects called the Uchide and the Kozuchi. Their association with Daikokuten explains the popular names Takaradera and Daikokuten Takaradera.
Pagoda and painted panel
The temple’s cultural-property holdings include the three-storied pagoda and a painted wooden panel depicting divine figures. These works belong to the surviving artistic and architectural heritage associated with Hōshaku-ji. The temple’s Buddhist images and related works are from after the 1232 fire, although individual objects are not all assigned specific dates.
