Daian-ji

Quick facts

Address

2-18-1 Daianji, Nara

About this place

Daian-ji is in Nara. It is Japan’s first state-founded temple, beginning with the Kumagori retreat that Prince Shotoku founded at Nukatabe in Heguri district. It then changed both name and place — Kudara Daiji, Takechi Daiji, Daikan Daiji — and on moving to the Nara capital became Daian-ji. The eminent Nara-period priest Doji is known for completing the temple’s Tenpyo halls and for transmitting the Sanron school. Today the temple draws devotion as a temple for sealing off cancer, the gravest of grievous and intractable diseases; its observances include the Konin rite on 23 January, called the cancer-sealing sake festival, the bamboo memorial on 23 June, called the cancer-sealing summer festival, and the founder’s memorial on 2 November.

Origin and history

Daian-ji is Japan’s first state-founded temple, beginning with the Kumagori retreat that Prince Shotoku founded at Nukatabe in Heguri district.

It then changed both name and place — Kudara Daiji, Takechi Daiji, Daikan Daiji — and on moving to the Nara capital became Daian-ji.

The eminent Nara-period priest Doji is known for completing the temple’s Tenpyo halls and for transmitting the Sanron school.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotHealth & Healing

  A temple for sealing off cancer

  The temple draws devotion as a place for sealing off cancer, and two of its annual observances carry that name.

  documented history

• Origin

  Japan’s first state-founded temple

  It begins with the Kumagori retreat that Prince Shotoku founded at Nukatabe in Heguri district, and calls itself the country’s first state-founded temple.

  folk tradition

• Origin

  Five names

  From Kumagori Shoja through Kudara Daiji, Takechi Daiji and Daikan Daiji, it became Daian-ji on moving to the Nara capital.

  documented history

This temple has five names. It began as the Kumagori retreat, became Kudara Daiji, then Takechi Daiji, then Daikan Daiji, and on moving to the Nara capital, Daian-ji. Not only the name but the site changed, four times over. Gango-ji in Nara went through four names and Kofuku-ji through three; this one moved the most.

The beginning is Prince Shotoku. It is the first state-founded temple in the country, the temple writes, starting from the Kumagori retreat he founded at Nukatabe. His name recurs across this list — Shitenno-ji, Horyu-ji, Rokkaku-do, Gango-ji and Chogosonshi-ji all place the same man at their beginnings.

The devotion practised here now is unusually specific. The temple draws devotion as a place for sealing off cancer, the gravest of grievous and intractable diseases. Two of its annual observances carry that name: the Konin rite on 23 January is the cancer-sealing sake festival, and the bamboo memorial on 23 June is the cancer-sealing summer festival. A state temple fourteen centuries old, visited now for one named disease.

On 2 November the founder’s memorial is held, with a reading of the Great Perfection of Wisdom sutra in remembrance of Doji.

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. 大安寺 — Daian-ji (accessed 2026-08-15)