Tokuunji Temple

A Nun's Temple on the Mikawa Bay Polders

Tokuunji Temple (徳雲寺, Tokuun-ji) is a Jōdo-shū Buddhist temple in Kira-cho Yoshida, Nishio City, Aichi Prefecture, founded by the nun Satta Honshin, whose main hall of 1883 and Bentendō of 1918 were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Property structures on 4 February 2021.

The temple stands on land reclaimed from Mikawa Bay. There are no hills here and no slopes, only rice fields and low houses running out toward the horizon.

The main hall faces east, with an entrance wing on its north side. East of the hall is a pond, and at its edge, on a raised base, stands the small Bentendō, facing south. The two carry different lot numbers, 19 Denzo-arako for the hall and 45 Yatsuda for the Bentendō, but they share one precinct.

The Nun They Called the Practitioner of Almsgiving

Tokuunji was founded by a nun named Satta Honshin (颯田本真). She was born in 1845 in Yoshida village, Hazu district, Mikawa province, now the Kira district of Nishio City. She was the eldest daughter of Satta Seizaemon, and as a child she was called Ritsu. Six of her twelve siblings also entered religious life.

She took the tonsure in 1856 under Tennen of Teishōin and trained under her aunt, the nun Honjō of Shinjuan. In devotion to Honjō's own teacher, the nun Jihon, she is said to have kept a three-year practice of chanting without ever lying down to sleep. In 1881 she received the dual Pure Land precept and doctrinal transmission from Shishiku Kanjō at Konkai Kōmyōji in Kyoto, and in 1885 she received the novice precepts from Kaidō of Teishōin.

The hermitage she built in her home village, Jikyōan, became Tokuunji. More than a hundred nuns trained there under her. She also founded a second Jikyōan at Kugenuma in Kanagawa Prefecture, today's Honshinji.

Her later years went to relief work. Beginning with the great storm surge that struck the Mikawa region in 1890 and ending with the earthquake damage at Fujisawa in 1923, she spent 35 years travelling to 23 prefectures and more than 150 towns and villages, handing out clothing and money. The record puts the households she assisted at over 60,000 and the households she visited on preaching rounds at over 100,000. That work earned her the title Fuse no Gyōja, the practitioner of almsgiving. She died on August 8, 1928.

The main hall went up in 1883, a few years before that relief work reached its full scale. The little Bentendō in the precinct was donated in 1918 by Izumiya Gisaburō, a lay follower devoted to Satta Honshin, a measure of the faith she inspired.

Getting There and Visiting

Kira-Yoshida Station, served by the Meitetsu Nishio and Gamagōri lines, is about a 10-minute walk east of the temple. Leave the station, follow the road between the houses and the fields, and you reach the precinct of Tokuunji.

The grounds run straight off the road, so the exteriors of the main hall and the Bentendō can be seen at close range. Neither Nishio City's cultural properties pages nor the temple publishes visiting hours or an admission fee. This is a working temple and the interior is not open on a regular basis. If you want to see inside, contact the temple in advance rather than asking on the day.

Photographing the exterior is unlikely to cause difficulty. Hold off while a service is in progress. The precinct is flat, with almost no steps.