Health & Healing
Places associated with health and healing.
Places with a stated association with health and recovery, most often through a deity described as one of medicine, such as Sukunahikona or Yakushi Nyorai. The pages record what each institution says people pray for. None of them makes a medical claim, and neither does this site.
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Places in this collection
TempleKiyomizu-dera
- Career & Work
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
A Kannon temple begun in 778 beside the Otowa waterfall, venerated by those seeking health, advancement and a good match.
ShrineMeiji Jingu
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
- Bonds & Matchmaking
A 1920 Shinto shrine in central Tokyo enshrining Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken, set in a 70-hectare forest that was planted from scratch and is visited today for prayers about bonds, protection and health.
ShrineYasaka Jinja
- Health & Healing
The Gion shrine of Susanoo, which has kept up for some eleven hundred and fifty years a festival begun as a prayer that an epidemic be quelled.
TempleBunhwangsa
- Health & Healing
The temple that held the image a blind child’s mother prayed to, after which he saw.
ShrineNezu Shrine
- Career & Work
- Exams & Study
- Family & Home
A Bunkyo shrine whose entire 1706 complex survives intact as an Important Cultural Property, rare in Tokyo, with an azalea hill and a tunnel of small red torii (鳥居).
ShrineUeno Toshogu
- Career & Work
- Health & Healing
A shrine in Ueno Park founded in 1627 to Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose gilded 1651 hall survived the Ueno war, the earthquake and the air raids intact.
TempleSangwonsa
- Health & Healing
A temple on Odaesan founded in 705, at the centre of the mountain’s Manjushri devotion, and known for the story that King Sejo met the bodhisattva here as a boy and was healed.
TempleYakushi-ji
- Health & Healing
Founded in 680 by Emperor Tenmu in prayer for the recovery of his empress from illness, and inscribed as World Heritage.
TempleRokuharamitsu-ji
- Health & Healing
Founded in 951, where Kuya hauled a Kannon he had carved through the streets against an epidemic — and the tea he gave the sick is still served.
TempleChogosonshi-ji
- Family & Home
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
Prince Shotoku is said to have perceived Bishamonten on this mountain at the tiger hour of the tiger day of the tiger year, and the temple received its name when Emperor Daigo recovered from grave illness.
ShrineTanzan Shrine
- Family & Home
- Health & Healing
- Money & Prosperity
A shrine to Fujiwara no Kamatari on the hill where he and Prince Naka no Oe held the secret conference that led to the Taika Reform.
ShrineKashihara Jingu
- Health & Healing
- Wish Fulfillment
A shrine to Emperor Jimmu, enshrined and founded on 2 April 1890, whose stated virtues are good fortune, long life and health, among others.
TempleShitenno-ji
- Health & Healing
- Money & Prosperity
Founded in 593 when Prince Shotoku made good on a battlefield vow — Japan’s first official state temple, still praying daily for recovery from illness and prosperity in business.
TempleDaian-ji
- Health & Healing
Japan’s first state-founded temple, beginning with the Kumagori retreat that Prince Shotoku founded, and today a temple where people pray against cancer.
TempleOka-dera
- Exams & Study
- Fertility & Children
- Health & Healing
Founded by the priest Gien on the vow of Emperor Tenji, it calls itself the first site in Japan for warding off misfortune and is the seventh station of the Saikoku pilgrimage.
TempleTsubosaka-dera
- Health & Healing
The sixth station of the Saikoku pilgrimage, whose principal image is a Kannon of proven efficacy against eye disease; the temple is called the temple that seals off eye disease.
ShrineNami Janggun Shrine
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
A shrine raised to console the wronged spirit of a general beheaded at twenty-seven.
TempleShin-Yakushi-ji
- Health & Healing
Founded in the third month of 747 by Empress Komyo, in prayer for Emperor Shomu’s recovery from illness.
TempleYakcheonsa
- Health & Healing
A temple in Daepo-dong, Seogwipo, whose name means the temple where medicinal spring water flows.
TempleKatsuo-ji
- Exams & Study
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
Begun in 727 when twin brothers built a hermitage on the mountain, and a temple of winning that defines winning as overcoming your own weak heart.
ShrineIshikiri Tsurugiya Jinja
- Health & Healing
- Skill & Mastery
Its name describes a divine power that cuts through solid rock, and it is known as the deity who heals growths and swellings.
ShrineNishino Jinja
- Fertility & Children
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
Begins with five settler households who crossed to Hokkaido in 1885 holding the guardian deity of the place they had left, and states safe childbirth, good matches, warding off misfortune and rising fortune as its benefits.
TempleRyosen-ji
- Health & Healing
Founded on a Yakushi Nyorai perceived at Kumano by Ono no Tomihito, and named Ryosen-ji when the Indian monk Bodhisena reported that the ground here looked just like Vulture Peak.
ShrineTaga Shrine
- Fertility & Children
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
A shrine to Izanagi and Izanami, the married pair who made the land and bore the eight million deities, where prayers run from long life to safety on a worksite.
ShrineTakakamo Shrine
- Family & Home
- Health & Healing
- Purification
Held to be the parent shrine of all the Kamo shrines and one of the oldest shrines in Japan, with a deep devotion around recovery and renewal.
ShrineTsuyu no Tenjinsha
- Exams & Study
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
An old shrine of thirteen centuries whose grove was the scene of the double suicide behind Chikamatsu’s play, and where people now come to ask for love to come true.
ShrineGuksadang, Inwangsan
- Fertility & Children
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
A shaman shrine moved from Namsan to the slope of Inwangsan in 1925 under Japanese pressure, where roughly a hundred gut rites are still held each year.
ShrineSeimei Jinja
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
A shrine to Abe no Seimei, whose crest — the five-pointed star — the shrine describes as one of the onmyodo talismans he devised.
ShrineSukunahikona Jinja
- Health & Healing
Founded in 1780 when the drug merchants of Doshomachi invited Sukunahikona into their guild meeting hall to sit beside Shennong.
ShrineDaegwallyeong Seonghwangsa and Sansingak
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
A mountain-god shrine at the top of the Daegwallyeong pass, whose deity is recorded as presiding over farming, illness, drought and the road.
ShrineHattori Tenjingu
- Health & Healing
Where Sugawara no Michizane, unable to take a step for illness in his legs on the road to Dazaifu, prayed to be healed — and which is revered since as the deity of feet.
ShrineSanko Jinja
- Health & Healing
Known since antiquity as the only deity in all Japan for warding off palsy, with its rite held for seven days from 1 June each year.