Kozan-ji Temple

Introduction

Kozan-ji stands at the far end of the castle town of Chofu in Shimonoseki, the family temple of the Chofu Mori clan. Founded in 1327 as a Soto Zen monastery under the name Chofuku-ji, it was renamed when it became the mortuary temple of Mori Hidemoto, founder of the Chofu domain. Its greatest possession is the national-treasure Buddha hall: ink inscriptions on the pillars date it to around 1320, making it the oldest dated building in the Zen (karayo) style in Japan. Three bays square with a surrounding skirt roof, hip-and-gable with cypress-bark roofing, it houses a seated Thousand-Armed Kannon and was designated a national treasure in 1953. Its power lies in restrained proportion and deep eaves rather than painted ornament, and it is the clearest surviving lesson in Kamakura karayo. The temple's other half belongs to the end of the shogunate: in the twelfth month of Genji 1 (1865), Takasugi Shinsaku raised some eighty men here, the 'Kozan-ji uprising' that turned Choshu toward the overthrow of the bakufu and opened the road to the Meiji Restoration. An equestrian statue of Takasugi stands in the grounds, and the stone steps below the gate are the ones his men charged down. The shoin's 'chamber of the five court nobles' is where Sanjo Sanetomi and four others stayed after being driven from Kyoto and met Takasugi; JPY 300 admits you to it and the garden. Cherry blossom in spring and late-November maple colour set off the old hall beautifully, and with the Chofu Mori residence, Chofu Garden and Kakuen-ji nearby it makes a quiet half day of history.

✨ Highlights

🛈 Practical Info