Renkei-ji Temple

Overview

Renkei-ji (蓮馨寺, れんけいじ, Renkei-ji) is a Buddhist temple of the Jōdo-shū (浄土宗, Jōdo-shū, the Pure Land sect) in Kawagoe, a city in Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo. The temple's mountain name, or sangō (山号, sangō), is Kōhozan (光保山), and its monastery name, or ingō (院号, ingō), is Hōchi-in (宝池院). The main object of worship is Amida Buddha (阿弥陀仏, Amida-butsu), the central figure of Pure Land devotion.

Renkei-ji belongs to two wider groupings. It is one of the 小江戸川越七福神 (Koedo Kawagoe Shichifukujin), the seven lucky gods circuit of Kawagoe — a pilgrimage route linking seven temples and shrines in the city. It is also counted among the Kantō Jūhachi Danrin (関東十八檀林), a network of eighteen Jōdo-shū seminaries in the Kantō region.

History

The temple was founded in 1549, in the Tenbun era (天文, Tenbun), the eighteenth year of that era name. This places its foundation in the late Muromachi period (1336–1573), a century of civil war that ended only with the unification campaigns of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1570s and 1580s. A temple founded in 1549 therefore belongs to the last generation of medieval religious foundations, before the Tokugawa shogunate imposed its system of temple registration and sect-by-sect regulation in the seventeenth century.

Kawagoe itself was a castle town, and its position on the road north from Edo made it a commercial centre — the reason it later acquired the nickname "Little Edo" (小江戸, Koedo), which survives in the name of the seven lucky gods circuit. Renkei-ji's inclusion in the Kantō Jūhachi Danrin reflects its role as a place of doctrinal study and clerical training within the Jōdo-shū, not merely a parish temple.

What Stands There Today

The temple stands in Kawagoe at coordinates 35.9196111, 139.4818889. It remains an active Jōdo-shū temple and one of the stops on the Koedo Kawagoe Shichifukujin pilgrimage, a route that takes visitors to seven sites across the city in search of the seven lucky gods. Pilgrims on such circuits traditionally collect a red seal, or shuin (朱印, shuin), at each stop.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 蓮馨寺. Its kana reading is れんけいじ, and its romaji is Renkei-ji. The name breaks down into three characters:

• 蓮 — read ren here. The character means "lotus". In Japanese Buddhism the lotus is the standard emblem of the Pure Land: the Lotus Sutra (法華経, Hokekyō) is one of the most influential scriptures in East Asian Buddhism, and Pure Land iconography places the reborn soul on a lotus throne. Note that the same character is read hasu when it means the plant in ordinary speech.
• 馨 — read kei here. The character means "fragrance" or "sweet-smelling", and by extension "far-reaching renown". It is a literary character, rare in everyday vocabulary, and it appears in temple names far more often than in place names or surnames.
• 寺 — read ji here. The character means "temple" and is the standard suffix for a Buddhist temple's name. It is read tera when it stands alone as a common noun.

Two pronunciation points matter for anyone saying the name aloud. First, the middle character 馨 is read kei — the same sound as in 景 (view) and 慶 (celebration) — so the name is Ren-kei-ji, with three even morae and no stress accent. Second, the final 寺 is voiced: ji, not shi or tera, because it follows a vowel. The pattern of a two-character auspicious phrase plus 寺 is the commonest shape for Japanese temple names, and 蓮馨寺 fits it exactly.

The mountain name, Kōhozan (光保山), and the monastery name, Hōchi-in (宝池院), follow the same conventions: a sangō ending in 山 (zan, "mountain") and an ingō ending in 院 (in, "cloister" or "precinct"). Hōchi-in contains 池 (chi, "pond"), an image that recurs in Pure Land writing.

Visiting and Context

Kawagoe is reached easily from central Tokyo, and the temple sits within the historic warehouse district that draws visitors to the city. Renkei-ji is best understood as part of two overlapping itineraries: the Koedo Kawagoe Shichifukujin circuit, which gives the temple its role in popular devotion, and the wider landscape of Jōdo-shū institutions represented by the Kantō Jūhachi Danrin. For a student of Japanese, the name repays attention: 蓮 (lotus), 馨 (fragrance), 寺 (temple) — three characters that together carry the devotional imagery of the Pure Land and the plain institutional fact of a Buddhist foundation.