is a

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

temple of the Ji sect in

Matsuyama, Ehime 270px, Matsuyama City Hall 270px, Ehime Prefectural Capital Building is the capital city of Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan and also Shikoku's largest city. , the city had an estimated population of 505,948 in 243541 househo ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It is famed as the birthplace of the Buddhist sage

Ippen was a Japanese Buddhist itinerant preacher (''hijiri'') who founded the branch of Pure Land Buddhism. Life Ippen was born at Hōgon-ji, a temple in Iyo Province (modern Ehime Prefecture) on the island of Shikoku. He was originally named . He fi ...

, who founded the Ji (time) sect as an offshoot of the Jōdo (

Pure Land Buddhism Pure Land Buddhism (; ja, 浄土仏教, translit=Jōdo bukkyō; , also referred to as Amidism in English,) is a broad branch of Mahayana Buddhism focused on achieving rebirth in a Buddha's Buddha-field or Pure Land. It is one of the most wid ...

) sect in 1276.

History

According to temple records, the temple was founded in 668 by an ancestor of the

Kōno clan Kōno, Kono or Kouno (written: 河野, 幸野, 高野 or 甲野) is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Kōno Bairei (1844–1895), Japanese painter, book illustrator and art teacher *Kōno Hironaka (1849–1923), Japanese ...

at the behest of the abdicated

Empress Saimei An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother (empr ...

was born at the temple in what was then

Iyo province was a province of Japan in the area of northwestern Shikoku. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tosa''" in . Iyo bordered on Sanuki Province to the northeast, Awa to the east, and Tosa to the south. Its abbreviated form name was . In term ...

in 1239. As a child he was known as Shōjomaru. In the year 1248, his mother died, and he became a monk with the name Zuien. In 1251 he left Iyo to study under Shōdatsu in Dazaifu. He returned to Iyo in 1263 at the time of his father's death, and married. In 1271, he vowed to give up his domestic life. On a visit to

Kumano Shrine A is a type of Shinto shrine which enshrines the three Kumano mountains: Hongū, Shingū, and Nachi [].Encyclopedia of ShintoKumano Shinkō accessed on October 6, 2008 There are more than 3,000 Kumano shrines in Japan, and each has received its k ...

in 1274, Ippen experienced a revelation and "spent the remaining sixteen years of his life in constant travel throughout Japan." "The term ''ippen'' 一遍 is a common word meaning 'once,' but its second element (''-pen, hen'') also has the meaning of 'everywhere' or 'all pervading.'" In 1292, three years after Ippen's death, Hōgon-ji was rededicated as a temple of the Ji sect. On August 10, 2013, the main temple building and priest's quarters were destroyed by fire.

Buildings and grounds

Besides the main hall, the temple grounds included a

rock garden A rock garden, also known as a rockery and formerly as a rockwork, is a garden, or more often a part of a garden, with a landscaping framework of rocks, stones, and gravel, with planting appropriate to this setting. Usually these are small A ...

and several

kuhi Kuhi is a town and a tehsil in the Umred subdivision of the Nagpur district in Nagpur, India. Kuhi is located 40 km from Nagpur District.Kuhi is two town areas. One is Kuhi and other is Bhojapur. It comes under the revenue division of Berar regi ...

(

haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...

stones) and other stone monuments. The

include a

Matsuyama file:Matsuyama city office Ehime prefecture Japan.jpg, 270px, Matsuyama City Hall file:Ehimekencho-20040417.JPG, 270px, Ehime Prefectural Capital Building is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan ...

poet

Masaoka Shiki , pen-name of Masaoka Noboru (正岡升), was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry, credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during ...

: :色里や十歩はなれて秋の風（正岡子規） ::''irozato ya jippa hanarete aki no kaze'' :red-light district :only ten steps away :autumn wind Other

feature haiku by

Mokichi Saitō was a Japanese people, Japanese poet of the Taishō period, a member of the Araragi (magazine), Araragi school of tanka, and a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist Shigeta Saitō (:ja:斎藤茂太, ''Japanese Wikipedia article'') is his first son, the ...

and Kawada Jun.

Treasures

The temple's most noted treasure, a 114 centimeter high (mid

Muromachi Period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

) ( Important Cultural Property), dating from mid-

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

(14th-16th centuries) was reportedly lost in the fire on August 10, 2013.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hogon-ji (Matsuyama) Buddhist temples in Ehime Prefecture Ji temples Important Cultural Properties of Japan