Chion-in

Quick facts

Address

400 Rinkacho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto

About this place

Chion-in, in Higashiyama, Kyoto, is the head temple of the Pure Land school. Its founder Honen was born on 7 April 1133 in Mimasaka province, in what is now Okayama. In 1175 he first preached exclusive nembutsu. The great gate was begun by the shogunate in 1619 and completed two years later; the gate and the founder’s hall were designated National Treasures in 2002.

Origin and history

Chion-in is the head temple of the Pure Land school. Its founder Honen was born on 7 April 1133 in Kumenanjo Inaoka in Mimasaka province, now Okayama. In 1175 he first propagated exclusive nembutsu.

In 1619 the shogunate began building the great gate and the sutra repository, completing them two years later. In 2002 the gate and the founder’s hall were designated National Treasures.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  1175, exclusive nembutsu

  Honen first propagated exclusive nembutsu in 1175.

  documented history

• Origin

  Born in 1133

  The founder Honen was born on 7 April 1133 in Mimasaka province.

  documented history

• Power spot

  The great gate and founder’s hall

  The gate was begun in 1619 and completed two years later; both were designated National Treasures in 2002.

  documented history

What this temple transmits is not a category of wish but the line of a teaching. In 1175 Honen first preached exclusive nembutsu — a way of practice narrowed to the single act of calling the Buddha’s name.

The temple’s own chronology then proceeds in buildings and dates. The shogunate began the great gate in 1619 and finished it two years later; in 2002 the gate and the founder’s hall became National Treasures.

This page carries no category of prayer. What has been taught here is not the granting of things but being saved, and that does not fit inside a category.

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. 歴史と見どころ — 浄土宗総本山 知恩院 — Chion-in (accessed 2026-08-13)