Koonji Temple

A Temple on the North Bank of the Tone

Koonji Temple (光恩寺, Kōon-ji) is a Shingon Buddhist temple in Akaiwa, Chiyoda Town, Gunma Prefecture, which temple tradition says was revived by Kōbō Daishi in 814, and four of its buildings were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 1999. Its formal name is Akaiwa-san Kōon-ji. The temple sits on the north bank of the Tone River, and the far shore belongs to Saitama Prefecture.

The temple's own account reaches back further still. It counts Koonji Temple among nine temples founded across Japan by order of Emperor Yūryaku, and says that in 625 a monk named Ekan, sent to the Yamato court from the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo, settled here at the invitation of a local clan and opened the temple. One version puts Kōbō Daishi's refounding in 806 rather than 814. These are temple traditions, not dates confirmed by independent records.

Later centuries, as the temple records them, are a cycle of loss and repair. In 1321 Emperor Go-Daigo is said to have ordered war-damaged halls rebuilt and granted the name Akaiwa-san Kōon-ji. Fighting in the Yūki War burned the precinct in 1440, and in 1648 the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu confirmed a temple estate of a little over 16 koku.

Fire kept returning. Lightning destroyed the main hall, the priests' quarters, a hall for the smallpox deity and the Niō gate in 1830. A new main hall was raised in 1843 and finished in 1862, only to burn in 1866. The main hall that stands today dates from 1883.

Two of the four registered buildings arrived from elsewhere during that Meiji-era recovery. Part of the temple's private quarters, in other words, was assembled from other people's houses, and that is the key to reading the site.

Why Four Buildings Were Registered Together

All four were registered on the same day, February 17, 1999, under consecutive numbers 10-0035 to 10-0038. The gatehouse qualified as a building that contributes to the historic landscape of the country; the priests' quarters, the guest hall and the stone storehouse were each registered as models of architectural form.

Their origins could hardly be more mixed. The Nagayamon gatehouse was built in the late Edo period for the Ogino family, village headmen at Tawarase on the opposite bank of the Tone (now part of Kumagaya City, Saitama), and moved here around 1887. It is the birthplace gate of Ogino Ginko, the first woman in Japan to become a government-licensed physician. The Kuri, or priests' quarters, is likewise a late Edo farmhouse: the main house of a wealthy farming family, which the Agency for Cultural Affairs says was brought from Tatebayashi. The guest hall is dated to the late Meiji period, and the stone storehouse to around 1933.

Function is what ties them together. The gatehouse serves as the side entrance to the priests' quarters. The guest hall joins the northeast corner of the priests' quarters, and the storehouse stands against the guest hall's east gable. The Agency describes the priests' quarters, guest hall and storehouse as the core of the temple's residential side. Seen as a set, they show how a temple stripped of its buildings by fire rebuilt its living space with the help of its parishioners.

The sources disagree on dates. The Agency's database puts the gatehouse's move at around 1887 and the priests' quarters' move sometime between 1887 and 1896, and does not describe the guest hall as relocated. The temple's website says the guest hall and gatehouse were moved around the time the main hall was built in 1883, and that the priests' quarters was donated after the 1866 fire by the wealthy farmer Arakawa Yagozaemon Hirofumi, at the urging of Okanoya Shigezane, a senior retainer of the Tatebayashi domain, citing the local chronicle Tatebayashi Sōdan. Neither account has been independently confirmed, so both are given here.

Finding Your Way Around the Grounds

Pass through the main gate and the main hall stands straight ahead. Just inside on the left, in an open-sided shelter, is a stone slab incised with an image of Jizō Bosatsu and dated 1271, known locally as the Tsumabiki Jizō. Inside the main hall, dragon kings of the Diamond and Womb realms fill a ceiling painting that covers some 70 tatami mats.

The grounds also contain the Dōyama burial mound, which the temple describes as a keyhole-shaped tomb 90 meters long, thought to date from the early 7th century. A bell tower stands on it, hanging a bell cast in 1703, and on the mound is a five-tiered stone pagoda for Akai Terumitsu, the lord who built Tatebayashi Castle. Terumitsu died in 1545 and, by tradition, left instructions to be buried here.

The four registered buildings sit together in one corner. Walk through the gatehouse and the broad gable of the priests' quarters rises in front of you; the guest hall closes the view at the far end, with the storehouse to its east. These are working and living spaces, not exhibition halls, so a visit is mostly about exteriors.

Koonji Temple holds other protected objects too. A set of five bronze ritual bells, thought to date from the Kamakura period and comprising jewel, stupa, five-pronged, three-pronged and single-pronged types, was designated by the national government in 2007 and is not currently on view. The Amida triad in the Amida Hall and the Jizō slab were designated by Gunma Prefecture in 1977, and the temple bell by Chiyoda Town in 1988. The Amida Hall itself was rebuilt in 1978.

Festivals Through the Year

The principal image, a Fudō Myōō kept out of sight for most of the year, is shown at New Year and at the spring and autumn festivals. On March 28 the spring Fudō festival opens with a chanted reading of the Great Wisdom Sutra in the main hall at 11 a.m.; at 1:30 p.m. a large outdoor fire rite is held and ascetics walk across the embers, after which visitors may follow once the fire has been damped down. The autumn Fudō festival falls on October 28.

A service for the Amida triad is held on May 1. On August 18, lanterns are floated on the Tone River in memory of those who have drowned in it. The custom is said to have begun in 1877, when a local man drowned and his employer arranged a memorial with the temple's priest; Chiyoda Town designated it a folk cultural property in 2022, and a local committee now organizes it.

Visiting and Getting There

The grounds are open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The temple's website lists no admission fee for the grounds. To see inside the main hall or other halls, call ahead to arrange it (0276-86-2157). The website gives no rules on photography, so ask before taking pictures indoors or during services.

Koonji Temple is reached by taxi from the nearest stations: about 20 minutes from Tatebayashi Station on the Tōbu Isesaki Line, or about 25 minutes from Fukiage Station on the JR Takasaki Line. By car it is roughly 30 minutes from the Tatebayashi interchange of the Tōhoku Expressway and 40 minutes from the Higashi-Matsuyama interchange of the Kan-Etsu Expressway, and there is a parking lot next to the grounds. The temple gives its address as 1041 Akaiwa, Chiyoda-machi, Ōra-gun, Gunma; the national register lists it as 1041 Akaiwa-kō.

Tawarase, where the gatehouse first stood, lies across the Tone on the Saitama side.