Kegon-ji Temple

Overview

Kegon-ji (華厳寺) is a Buddhist temple in the Tanigumi Tokuzumi neighbourhood of Ibigawa, a town in Gifu Prefecture, central Japan. It belongs to the Tendai school of Japanese Buddhism, and its principal object of worship — the honzon (本尊, the main sacred image enshrined in a temple) — is a hibutsu (秘仏, a Buddhist image kept permanently hidden from public view) depicting Jūichimen Kannon (十一面観音), the Eleven-Faced Kannon, a form of the bodhisattva of compassion.

The temple's full name is Tanigumi-san Kegon-ji (谷汲山 華厳寺), combining a mountain name, sangō (山号), with the temple name proper. It was founded in 798, in the early Heian period (794–1185), and its grounds sit at coordinates 35.5373720, 136.6078970.

Kegon-ji holds a distinctive place in Japanese pilgrimage geography. It is the 33rd and final stop on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, a circuit of thirty-three temples dedicated to Kannon across western and central Japan, and it is the only temple on that route lying outside the Kansai region. It also belongs to two further circuits: the Tōkai Haku-ju Sanjūsan Kannon Reijō (東海白寿三十三観音霊場) and the Tōkai Sanjūroku Fudōson Reijō (東海三十六不動尊霊場).

History

Kegon-ji was founded in 798, which corresponds to the seventeenth year of the Enryaku era (延暦), during the reign of Emperor Kanmu. The temple therefore belongs to the first decades of the Heian period, an era in which the Japanese state was consolidating its capital at Heian-kyō, the city now known as Kyoto, and in which Buddhist institutions were expanding beyond the older centres of Nara.

The temple's Tendai affiliation places it within the school founded by the monk Saichō, who established his headquarters on Mount Hiei above Kyoto in the early ninth century. Tendai became one of the dominant Buddhist traditions of the Heian period and remained a major force in Japanese religious life for centuries afterwards.

Kegon-ji is also recorded as the temple after which Nata-dera Temple is named, a link preserved in the historical record rather than in the temple's own foundation story.

What Stands There Today

The temple stands in the Tanigumi district of Ibigawa, in a valley setting in Gifu Prefecture. Its central sacred image, the Eleven-Faced Kannon, is a hibutsu — a hidden image that is not displayed to ordinary visitors, a practice with deep roots in Japanese Buddhism whereby certain icons are kept concealed, sometimes for centuries, and revealed only on rare occasions.

Because Kegon-ji is the final stop on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, it functions as the goal of a route that begins far to the west. Pilgrims who complete the circuit traditionally finish here, in the hills of Gifu, rather than in Kyoto, Osaka, or Nara, where most of the route's other temples are found.

The temple's membership in the Tōkai Haku-ju Sanjūsan Kannon Reijō and the Tōkai Sanjūroku Fudōson Reijō ties it into regional circuits as well, so that it serves both as the endpoint of a long-distance national pilgrimage and as a station on shorter routes through the Tōkai district.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name in Japanese is 華厳寺, read in kana as けごんじ and romanised as Kegonji or Kegon-ji. The full name used by the temple is 谷汲山 華厳寺, read Tanigumi-san Kegon-ji.

Breaking the temple name down character by character:

• 華 — read ke in this word. The character means "flower," "blossom," or "splendour." It is the same character used in the name of the Kegon school of Buddhism, the tradition associated with the Avataṃsaka Sūtra.
• 厳 — read gon in this word. The character means "strict," "solemn," "majestic," or "magnificent." Together with 華 it forms 華厳 (kegon), the Japanese rendering of the Chinese name for the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, one of the great Mahāyāna scriptures.
• 寺 — read ji in this word. The character means "temple." It is the standard suffix attached to the names of Buddhist temples in Japan, and appears in the names of the other pilgrimage sites on the Saigoku route as well.

The mountain name 谷汲山 is read Tanigumi-san. 谷 (tani) means "valley," 汲 (gumi, from kumu) means "to draw water" or "to scoop," and 山 (san) means "mountain" — the standard element in a temple's sangō, its honorific mountain name. The name Tanigumi is also the name of the district where the temple stands.

Visiting and Context

Kegon-ji is located in Ibigawa, Gifu Prefecture, at coordinates 35.5373720, 136.6078970. The town lies in the western part of the prefecture, in a region of river valleys and low mountains.

For readers of Japanese, the temple's name repays attention. The element 華厳 links the temple to the Kegon school of Buddhism, whose name derives from the same scripture, and the character 寺 is one of the most useful in the language for anyone reading about Japanese religion: it marks a Buddhist temple, in contrast to 神社 (jinja), a Shintō shrine.

The temple's role as the thirty-third and final stop on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage gives it a fixed place in a well-known itinerary. Pilgrims on that route travel from temple to temple in numbered order, and Kegon-ji, as number thirty-three, is the point at which the circuit concludes. Its position outside Kansai — the only such site on the route — makes it a geographical outlier as well as a ritual endpoint.