Hoki-ji

Quick facts

Address

1873 Okamoto, Ikaruga, Ikoma, Nara

Spiritual entities

Avalokiteśvara (Kannon · Gwaneum, 観音菩薩)

About this place

Hoki-ji is in Ikaruga, Nara. On the twenty-second day of the second month of 622, as he was dying, Prince Shotoku instructed his eldest son Prince Yamashiro no Oe to convert the palace, Okamoto, into a temple. The finial of the pagoda is said to have been made in the third month of 706. The three-storey pagoda is the oldest still standing, and dates from that year. An eleven-headed Kannon of the Heian period was formerly the principal image of the lecture hall and is now kept in the treasure house. The temple’s account states no benefit that may be prayed for.

Origin and history

On the twenty-second day of the second month of 622, as he was dying, Prince Shotoku instructed his eldest son Prince Yamashiro no Oe to convert the palace, Okamoto, into a temple.

The finial of the pagoda is said to have been made in the third month of 706. The three-storey pagoda is the oldest still standing, and dates from that year.

An eleven-headed Kannon of the Heian period was formerly the principal image of the lecture hall and is now kept in the treasure house.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  A last instruction, dated

  On the twenty-second day of the second month of 622, as he was dying, Prince Shotoku instructed his son to convert the Okamoto palace into a temple.

  documented history

• Power spot

  The oldest three-storey pagoda standing

  The three-storey pagoda is the oldest still standing, dating from 706.

  documented history

• What people do here

  The lecture hall’s Kannon

  An eleven-headed Kannon of the Heian period was formerly the principal image of the lecture hall and is now in the treasure house.

  documented history

This temple begins with an instruction given on a deathbed. On the twenty-second day of the second month of 622, as he was dying, Prince Shotoku told his eldest son to turn the palace into a temple — a last instruction that survives with its date attached.

Horyu-ji, in the same village of Ikaruga, is the temple that same prince vowed to build for his own late father, Emperor Yomei. A temple a son built for a father, and a father’s order that a son build a temple. Two temples facing each other across one man.

This was a palace before it was a temple. A residence called Okamoto simply became one. Toshodai-ji in Nara was likewise opened on the former residence of Prince Niitabe. Two places on this list are buildings people had lived in.

The finial of the pagoda is dated to the third month of 706, and the three-storey pagoda, the oldest still standing, dates from that year.

The temple’s account names no benefit, so this page carries no tag for what may be prayed for.

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. 法起寺 — Horyu-ji / Hoki-ji (accessed 2026-08-15)