Daisenji Temple

Daisenji Temple

Daisenji Temple (大山寺) in Daisen Town, Tottori Prefecture, is a Tendai temple whose Amida Hall of 1552 was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1904, and whose main hall of 1951 and bell tower of 1950 were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2017 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency describes Daisenji, said to have been founded in the Nara period, as a sacred site of the Daisen mountain faith and one of the leading Tendai temples of the Chugoku region. According to Daisen Town tourism material, the main hall burned in 1928 and was rebuilt in 1951.

The Three Buildings

The Amida Hall, rebuilt after a landslide of 1529, is the oldest surviving building of the temple, a grand frame of thick posts and beams with Japanese-style details (Agency for Cultural Affairs; Japan Tourism Agency). Inside sit a 12th-century Amida and two attendant bodhisattvas.

The main hall has a pyramidal copper roof with a cusped gable at the front, and the bell tower, one bay square under a gabled roof, stands west of it; both build modern touches onto a medieval manner (Agency for Cultural Affairs). A Muromachi hall and the halls rebuilt after the fire tell the story of a temple on a sacred mountain. Each building is described on its own page.

Visiting

It is owned by Daisenji Temple (Agency for Cultural Affairs) and lies within Daisen-Oki National Park (Japan Tourism Agency). No official information on visiting hours was found.