Horyu-ji

Quick facts

Address

1-1-1 Horyuji Sannai, Ikaruga, Nara

About this place

Horyu-ji is in Ikaruga, Nara. Prince Shotoku made a vow to build a temple for his late father, Emperor Yomei, and what was completed around 607, the fifteenth year of Empress Suiko, is Horyu-ji. Its present western precinct is known as the oldest group of wooden buildings in the world.

Origin and history

Prince Shotoku made a vow to build a temple for his late father, Emperor Yomei.

What was completed around 607, the fifteenth year of Empress Suiko, is Horyu-ji.

The present western precinct is known as the oldest group of wooden buildings in the world.

What it is locally associated with

• OriginFamily & Home

  A vow for a dead father

  Prince Shotoku made a vow to build a temple for his late father, Emperor Yomei.

  documented history

• Origin

  Completed around 607

  What was completed around 607, the fifteenth year of Empress Suiko, is Horyu-ji.

  documented history

• Power spot

  The oldest wooden buildings in the world

  The present western precinct is known as the oldest group of wooden buildings in the world.

  documented history

This temple was built by a son for his father. Prince Shotoku vowed to build a temple for his late father, Emperor Yomei — that is the beginning the temple transmits, and who it was built for is the reason it exists.

There are places of the same shape elsewhere on this list. Kodai-ji was founded by Nene to pray for Hideyoshi’s repose; Bongeun-sa was built by a widow to pray for her husband’s. Different countries and different centuries, but the same structure: a building raised for someone who has died.

It was completed around 607. The present western precinct is known as the oldest group of wooden buildings in the world. The reason for building was a private one; what survived became the oldest wooden architecture anywhere.

The temple’s own guide does not name its principal image, so neither does this page.

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. 法隆寺の伽藍 — Horyu-ji (accessed 2026-08-15)