is the ecclesiastic head temple of Kōyasan

Shingon is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asian Buddhism. It is a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism and is sometimes called "Tōmitsu" (東密 lit. "Esoteric uddhismof Tō- ...

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

, located on ,

Wakayama Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Wakayama Prefecture has a population of 876,030 () and a geographic area of . Wakayama Prefecture borders Osaka Prefecture to the north, and Mie Prefecture and Nara Prefecture to ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Its name means ''Temple of the Diamond Mountain Peak''. It is part of the " Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range"

UNESCO World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

. The

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

was first constructed as Seigan-ji Temple in 1593 by

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods and regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: ...

on the death of his mother, rebuilt in 1861, and given its present name in 1869. It contains many sliding screen doors painted by Kanō Tanyū (1602-1674) and members of the

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

Kanō school The is one of the most famous schools of Japanese painting. The Kanō school of painting was the dominant style of painting from the late 15th century until the Meiji era, Meiji period which began in 1868, by which time the school had divided i ...

. The temple's modern ''Banryūtei'' (蟠龍庭 rock garden) is Japan's largest (2340 square meters), with 140 granite stones arranged to suggest a pair of dragons emerging from clouds to protect the temple. The 414th abbot of Kongōbu-ji is the Reverend Kogi Kasai, who also acts as the archbishop of the Kōyasan Shingon school. At the temple, visitors can listen to the sermons of the monks and participate in ''ajikan'' meditation sessions. The term ''ajikan'' refers to a fundamental breathing and meditation method of

Shingon Buddhism is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asian Buddhism. It is a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism and is sometimes called "Tōmitsu" (東密 lit. "Esoteric uddhismof Tō-j ...

: "meditating on the letter A" written using the Siddhaṃ alphabet.
page on the Ajikan
with references.

Gallery

File:Kongobuji Koyasan07n3200.jpg, Approach File:Koyasan Danjogaran Fudodo.JPG, Fudōdō,
a National Treasure File:Kongobuji Temple, Koyasan, Japan - Banryutei rock garden.JPG, Banryūtei rock garden File:Eight Attendants I Kongobuji.jpg, Eight Attendants File:Eight Attendants II Kongobuji.jpg, Eight Attendants File:Miniature Buddhist shrine Kongobuji.jpg File:Seitaka Doji Kongobuji.jpg, Seitaka Doji

References

Japan Visitor article

* Alison Main, Newell Platten, ''The Lure of the Japanese Garden'', W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, page 46. . * Dorothy Perkins, ''Encyclopedia of Japan: Japanese History and Culture, from Abacus to Zori'', "Kongobuji" article, Facts on File, 1991, page 182. .

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kongobu-ji Buddhist temples in Wakayama Prefecture 816 establishments Religious buildings and structures completed in the 810s 9th-century establishments in Japan National Treasures of Japan Important Cultural Properties of Japan World Heritage Sites in Japan Historic Sites of Japan Kūkai Kōyasan Wakayama Prefecture designated tangible cultural property

Gallery

See also

References

External links