In Japanese a is a

Buddhist temple A Buddhist temple or Buddhist monastery is the place of worship for Buddhists, the followers of Buddhism. They include the structures called vihara, chaitya, stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions and languages. Temples in Buddhism represen ...

dedicated to Benten or

Benzaiten Benzaiten (''shinjitai'': 弁才天 or 弁財天; ''kyūjitai'': 辯才天, 辨才天, or 辨財天, lit. "goddess of eloquence"), also simply known as Benten (''shinjitai'': 弁天; ''kyūjitai'': 辯天 / 辨天), is a Japanese Buddhist god ...

, goddess of wealth, happiness, wisdom, and music. Many such temples exist all over Japan. Because the goddess was originally the personification of a river, ''Benten-dō'' often stand next to some source of water, a river, pond, spring, or even the sea. The goddess is routinely believed to be essentially the same as '' kami'' Ugajin within the syncretism of Buddhism and local ''kami'' worship called ''

shinbutsu-shūgō ''Shinbutsu-shūgō'' (, "syncretism of kami and buddhas"), also called Shinbutsu shū (, "god buddha school") Shinbutsu-konkō (, "jumbling up" or "contamination of kami and buddhas"), is the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism that was Japan's o ...

''. For this reason, Benten-dō can be found also at many Shinto shrines, despite use of the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

''-

dō Dō may refer to: * Dō (architecture) * Dō (armour) * Dō (martial arts) * Dō (philosophy) ''Tao'' or ''Dao'' is the natural order of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom, ...

'', which is the traditional designation for a Buddhist "hall". In contrast, the halls of Shinto shrines use the esuffix ''-den'', as in ''honden''. An example of the syncretic association is the

Kawahara Shrine The is a Shinto shrine and Buddhist Benten-dō located in the Showa ward of Nagoya, central Japan. The construction date of the shrine is not clear, it is assumed however that is appeared around 1000. The shrine underwent a number of reconstruc ...

in Nagoya.

References

* Buddhist temples in Japan {{Japan-religious-struct-stub