What the Tendai school is
The Tendai school was founded by Saicho in the ninth century. Seated at Enryakuji on Mount Hiei, it combines a teaching centred on the Lotus Sutra with esoteric practice, and with the Shingon school it represents the Buddhism of the Heian period.
Records use it to characterise a temple. Zuiganji in Hyogo Prefecture, an Important Cultural Property, is described as a Tendai temple said to have been founded in the Nara period, which became the funerary temple of the lords of Himeji about 1649; its main hall is a large building of 1692, and other structures in the precinct were put up during the Edo period.
Jumyoin in the same prefecture, built in 1691, is described as a sub-temple of Enkyoji on Mount Shosha north-west of Himeji, Enkyoji itself being a Tendai temple founded in 966 by Shoku, visited by a retired emperor in 986 and thereafter supported by the court nobility.
A sub-temple is a smaller establishment within the precinct of a larger one. Great temples hold many of them, and each is recorded in its own right.
Parent of later schools
Many of the schools founded in the Kamakura period grew out of Tendai, their founders having trained on Mount Hiei, including those in the Pure Land Buddhism current. Any account of the lineages needs that relationship.
It is also bound up with Shinbutsu-shūgō. Tendai temples kept guardian shrines and shrines kept attached temples, and until the separation of the early Meiji period the precincts were one.
The school does not determine architectural manner. Tendai temples include buildings in Wayō and in Zenshūyō alike, since style is classified on a separate axis together with Daibutsuyō.
When writing, use the school to describe the character of a temple. Records name it at the head of a description to place the temple within a lineage.
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs: National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties (structures)
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/yukei_kenzobutsu/kokuho_bunkazai.html
- National Cultural Properties Database: Zuiganji, a Tendai temple said to date from the Nara period, its main hall built in 1692
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/102/00004336
- National Cultural Properties Database: Jumyoin guest hall and priests' quarters, its guest rooms finished in the formal study-hall manner
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/102/00004712
- National Cultural Properties Database: Ishiyamadera, a Shingon temple whose guardian shrine buildings show how a shrine sat within a temple precinct
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/102/00004311
Last verified: 2026.09.10