Kimpusen-ji Temple

Overview

Kinpusen-ji (金峯山寺) is a Buddhist temple in Yoshino, in Nara Prefecture, Japan. It is the head temple of Kinpusen-Shugendō, a branch of the mountain ascetic religion known as Shugendō (修験道, shugendō). Shugendō draws on Shinto, Taoist and Buddhist beliefs, and its practitioners, called yamabushi, train through hardship in the mountains. Together with Ōminesan-ji, Kinpusen-ji is regarded as the most important temple in Shugendō.

The temple stands on the slopes of Mount Yoshino, at coordinates 34.3683780, 135.8581350. Its founding is traditionally dated to the year 700, in the Asuka period (538–710), the era when Buddhism was still consolidating its place in Japan. Tradition credits the founding to En no Gyōja, the figure who propagated the mountain asceticism from which Shugendō grew.

Kinpusen-ji is a junction in a series of stops on pilgrimage routes. It belongs to the En no Gyōja Reiseki Fudasho pilgrimage circuit, to the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi circuit, and to the UNESCO World Heritage Site designated in 2004 as the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.

History

By tradition, En no Gyōja founded Kinpusen-ji in 700, during the Asuka period. He taught a form of mountain asceticism that combined Shinto, Taoist and Buddhist elements — the practice that became Shugendō. The temple he established at Yoshino grew into the head temple of the Kinpusen-Shugendō branch.

The temple's central object of worship is Zaō gongen (蔵王権現), a deity particular to Shugendō. The main hall built to house it, the Zaōdō, is the second largest wooden structure in Japan, exceeded only by the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdai-ji in Nara.

In the Nanboku-chō period (1336–1392), when rival Northern and Southern Courts fought for legitimacy, Yoshino served as the seat of the Southern Court. In 1963, Kinpusen-ji built a hall named the Southern Court Mystic Law Hall (Nanchō Myōhōden) to appease the souls of the four emperors of the Southern Court and of others who died in the many battles of that conflict. The hall's principal image is a statue of Gautama Buddha, known in Japanese as Shaka Nyōrai (釈迦如来).

In 2004, Kinpusen-ji was designated as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site listed under the name Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.

What Stands There Today

The temple complex includes several distinct structures. The Main Hall, Kinpusen-ji, houses Zaō gongen and is the second largest wooden building in Japan after Tōdai-ji's Great Buddha Hall. The Niō Gate, Kinpusen-ji, is the temple's gate, guarded in the conventional manner by the Niō, the paired muscular guardians of Buddhist gateways. The Kane no Torii is a torii gate made of metal — a rare form, since torii are usually wooden or stone, and a visible marker of Shugendō's blending of Shinto and Buddhist practice.

A Shinto shrine dedicated to Inari Ōkami is attached to the main compound, another expression of the fusion of shrine and temple that characterises this site. The Southern Court Mystic Law Hall, built in 1963, stands within the complex and enshrines Shaka Nyōrai as its principal image.

Kinpusen-ji is one of the stops on the pilgrimage routes that thread through the Kii Mountain Range. Its position at Yoshino makes it a junction where several of these routes meet.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 金峯山寺. It is read in kana as きんぷせんじ, and romanised as Kinpusen-ji.

Taken character by character:

• 金 — read here as kin. It means "gold" or "metal". The same character appears in the name of the Kane no Torii, the metal gate at the temple.
• 峯 — read here as pu, a sound change from hō or mine. It means "peak" or "summit". This is the character that carries the mountain into the temple's name. A common alternative form of the same character is 峰.
• 山 — read here as sen, again a sound change, from san. It means "mountain". So the first three characters together, 金峯山, mean "Mount Kinpu" — the sacred mountain of the temple, not a separate geographical feature on a map.
• 寺 — read here as ji. It means "temple". This is the standard suffix for a Buddhist temple in Japanese, and it appears in names across the country, from Tōdai-ji to Ōminesan-ji.

The reading is worth noting because it is not the straightforward one. A reader meeting 金峯山寺 for the first time might guess Kinbōzan-ji or Kinpūsan-ji. The established reading is Kinpusen-ji, with the final 寺 voiced to ji rather than left as tera. The mountain name 金峯山 is itself read Kinpusen, and the temple takes its name from the mountain.

Visiting and Context

Kinpusen-ji sits in Yoshino, in Nara Prefecture, a district long associated with mountain religion and with the Southern Court. The temple opens onto the pilgrimage network of the Kii Mountain Range, and it is registered within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of that name, designated in 2004. It is also a stop on the En no Gyōja Reiseki Fudasho circuit, which links sites connected to the founder, and on the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi, a pilgrimage route that takes in both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples — an appropriate framework for a temple that has carried Shinto and Buddhist practice together since its founding.

For a visitor, the complex offers the Main Hall with its image of Zaō gongen, the Niō Gate, the metal Kane no Torii, and the attached Inari shrine, alongside the Southern Court Mystic Law Hall built in 1963. The scale of the Main Hall — second only to Tōdai-ji's Great Buddha Hall among wooden structures in Japan — is the single most striking fact about the place, and it reflects the importance Kinpusen-ji has held, with Ōminesan-ji, at the centre of Shugendō.