Shoman-in Aizendo

Quick facts

Address

5-36 Yuhigaokacho, Tennoji-ku, Osaka

About this place

Shoman-in Aizendo is in Tennoji, Osaka, a temple founded by Prince Shotoku in 593. It stands on the site of the dispensary among the four institutions Shotoku established, and is called the birthplace of welfare work. Its many-treasure pagoda was rebuilt by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1597 and is an Important Cultural Property. The temple is described as a power spot with strong blessings for the binding of ties, the fulfilment of good matches, harmony between husband and wife, and prosperity in business, and the image of Aizen Myoo is opened to view at the New Year.

Origin and history

Shoman-in Aizendo is a temple founded by Prince Shotoku in 593.

It stands on the site of the dispensary among the four institutions Shotoku established, and is called the birthplace of welfare work.

Its many-treasure pagoda was rebuilt by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1597 and is an Important Cultural Property.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotLove & RomanceBonds & MatchmakingMoney & Prosperity

  Ties, good matches, marital harmony

  Described as a power spot with strong blessings for the binding of ties, the fulfilment of good matches, harmony between husband and wife, and prosperity in business.

  documented history

• Origin

  The dispensary site

  Founded by Prince Shotoku in 593, on the site of the dispensary among his four institutions, and called the birthplace of welfare work.

  documented history

• What people do here

  Hideyoshi’s pagoda

  The many-treasure pagoda was rebuilt by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1597 and is an Important Cultural Property.

  documented history

This temple calls itself the birthplace of welfare work. The reason is the ground: the dispensary among Prince Shotoku’s four institutions stood here. Shitenno-ji, elsewhere on this list, writes that the work of those four institutions is still running. So the temple that carries on the work and the site where one of them stood are in the same city.

What the temple names as its blessings is four things: the binding of ties, the fulfilment of a good match, harmony between husband and wife, and prosperity in business. That the first three sit separately means the before, the joining, and the after are each counted on their own.

The many-treasure pagoda in the grounds was rebuilt by Hideyoshi in 1597 and is an Important Cultural Property — a building of 1597 standing on ground that began in 593.

Related guides

• How to visit a shrine or temple in JapanThe country-wide basics: purifying at the water basin, the two-bows-two-claps-one-bow form at shrines, and what temples do instead.
• What a "power spot" actually isA modern Japanese coinage, not a traditional religious category. Where the word came from, what it does and does not claim, and why this site uses it anyway.
• Shrine or temple?A shrine is Shinto and a temple is Buddhist, and you can usually tell at the gate. Why the line is cleaner on paper than on the ground, and what a government order in 1868 has to do with it.
• Omamori, ema, omikuji and goshuinThe four things you are most likely to receive, write, draw or be given at a shrine or temple, what each is actually for, and the one of them people most often get wrong.

Sources

1. 勝鬘院愛染堂 — Shoman-in Aizendo (accessed 2026-08-14)