Anyoin Temple

A Sub-Temple Across the Road from Saikyoji

Anyoin Temple (安養院, An'yōin) is a sub-temple of Saikyoji in Sakamoto-honmachi, Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture, whose nine buildings, most of them rebuilt between 1927 and 1935 around two older Edo-period halls, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan on 12 October 2001.

Saikyoji is the head temple of the Tendai Shinsei school, a branch of Tendai school Buddhism, and it spreads across a broad site on the eastern foot of Mount Hiei. Its long approach ends in the east at an outer gate, the sōmon, and Anyoin Temple occupies the plot directly across the road from that gate. In Japanese this kind of establishment is called a tatchū: a smaller temple that belongs to a larger one and serves it, often with its own halls, residence and garden. Anyoin has all three, set apart from the main precinct on a block of its own.

Sources do not agree on how to read the name. The national database of the Agency for Cultural Affairs glosses it as An'yōin, while the cultural property database of the Otsu City Museum of History gives An'nyoin. The address differs too: the national registration uses 3210 Sakamoto-honmachi, and the museum lists the site under Sakamoto 5-chome. When looking for Anyoin Temple on a map, it helps to try both.

A Nun's Remembered Site and a Shōwa Revival

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Anyoin Temple is said to stand on the former site associated with Anyō-ni, a nun connected with the monk Genshin (942 to 1017). Genshin trained at Yokawa, one of the three precincts on Mount Hiei, and Saikyoji's tradition holds that he also kept a hermitage at Saikyoji as a place of practice. The temple's name echoes hers.

None of that early history survives as standing architecture. Most of what is here now was rebuilt in the early Shōwa period with donations from Yamaguchi Gendō, a businessman born in Onomichi who made his fortune in Osaka's trade in imported Western textiles and became known for giving to public causes.

The rebuilding was not done in a single campaign. Put the registered buildings in date order and a sequence appears: the gate in 1927, the priests' quarters in 1928, the shoin in 1930, the worship hall in 1933, the Amida Hall and the storehouse in 1934, and the Benten Hall in 1935. Roughly one structure a year was added over nine years.

Two halls were already standing when the work began. The Shoten Hall appears on a picture map from the Tenpō era (1830 to 1844), and on that evidence and its detailing it is dated to the late Edo period, making it the oldest Buddhist hall at Anyoin. The Jizo Hall is thought to date from the very end of the Edo period, judging by how weathered its timbers are. The Shōwa builders kept both and rebuilt around them.

Nine Registrations Under Three Criteria

All nine buildings of Anyoin Temple were registered on the same day, under consecutive registration numbers 25-0170 to 25-0178. In effect, the whole sub-temple entered the national register at once.

They were not registered for the same reason. Seven buildings (the Amida Hall, priests' quarters, shoin, worship hall, storehouse, Benten Hall and Jizo Hall) qualified as works that have become a model of form. The gate was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and the Shoten Hall because it would not be easy to reproduce. Those are the three criteria used for buildings in the Registered Tangible Cultural Property system, and a single temple here exercises all of them.

The range of scale is wide as well. The priests' quarters cover a building area of 175 square metres, while the Benten Hall covers only 12 square metres, a difference of about 15 times. Almost every roof is tiled; the Benten Hall alone is roofed in copper sheet.

How Anyoin Temple Is Laid Out

The gate stands on the north side of the plot. It is a single-bay Yakuimon under a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof, 1.8 metres wide. Near the middle of the site, facing north, is the priests' quarters, the largest building at Anyoin and the one that holds the living rooms and kitchen.

The Amida Hall occupies the west side, raised on a platform of irregular stones and facing east. The two-storey storehouse stands right beside it to the north, so that the hall of worship and the building for keeping things sit shoulder to shoulder. Farther along the same west side, on a small rise near the centre, the little Benten Hall also faces east.

South of the priests' quarters are the shoin and the Jizo Hall, a small south-facing hall with a Hōgyō-zukuri pyramidal roof. The shoin meets the Shoten Hall at its southwest corner, and from the west side of the Shoten Hall a roofed corridor runs to the worship hall. Those three buildings form one connected chain in the southern part of the grounds, with the late-Edo hall at its core.

In short: the Amida and Benten halls face east, the priests' quarters face north, and the Jizo Hall faces south. The structure and details of each building are covered on its own page.

Visiting Anyoin Temple and Getting There

Anyoin Temple publishes no visiting hours or admission fee for the general public. A check of information from Saikyoji, the Biwako Otsu Tourism Association and Otsu City in September 2026 also turned up no announced openings of the nine interiors. A sub-temple is where priests live and carry out their duties, so the sensible default is to look at the buildings quietly from outside the gate, and to ask the temple first if you want to step into the grounds or take photographs.

By public transport, take the Kosei Line to JR Hieizan-Sakamoto Station, then an Ekō bus for about 7 minutes or walk for about 30 minutes. From Sakamoto-Hieizanguchi Station on the Keihan Ishiyama-Sakamoto Line, the bus takes about 4 minutes and the walk about 25 minutes. Get off the bus at the Saikyoji stop; Anyoin is across the road from Saikyoji's outer gate.

No parking arrangements specific to Anyoin Temple have been published for visitors arriving by car.