Isshin-ji

Quick facts

Address

2-8-69 Osaka, Tennoji-ku, Osaka

Spiritual entities

Amitābha (Amida Nyorai · Amita-bul, 阿弥陀如来)

About this place

Isshin-ji is a Jodo temple in Tennoji, Osaka. Its origin is dated to 1185, when Honen, founder of the Pure Land school, practised the meditation on the setting sun at a four-by-four-bay hermitage here called the New Hermitage of Arahaka. The hut was called Genku-an after Honen’s own name, and was later renamed Isshin-ji. From the end of the Edo period it was busy as the temple of the segaki rite, performed every day of the year, and since the bone buddha was made in 1887 it has been known as the temple of the bone buddhas. A bone buddha is an image of Amida made from cremated remains; the practice has run for more than 130 years since the first was cast, and some two million of the dead now sit in the ossuary and bone buddha hall in the form of Amida.

Origin and history

Isshin-ji’s origin is dated to 1185, when Honen, who founded the Pure Land school, practised the meditation on the setting sun at the four-by-four-bay hermitage here called the New Hermitage of Arahaka. The hut was called Genku-an after Honen’s own name, and was later renamed Isshin-ji.

In 1600, the year of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu’s eighth son Senchiyo died young and his funeral was held at Isshin-ji. In the winter campaign at Osaka in 1614, Ieyasu’s headquarters were placed here.

From the end of the Edo period the temple was busy as the temple of the segaki rite, performed every day of the year, and since the bone buddha was made in 1887 it has been known as the temple of the bone buddhas.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spot

  The bone buddhas

  Images of Amida made from cremated remains, begun in 1887. Some two million of the dead now sit there in the form of Amida.

  documented history

• What people do here

  To venerate one is a double offering

  The temple explains that venerating a bone buddha is at once an offering to the dead and to the buddha. Designated an intangible folk cultural property of Osaka in 2005.

  documented history

• Origin

  Honen and the setting sun

  Its origin is dated to 1185, when Honen practised the meditation on the setting sun at the hermitage called the New Hermitage of Arahaka.

  documented history

There are buddhas here made of people. A bone buddha is an image of Amida made from cremated remains. Making a buddha out of ashes — this unheard-of custom, the temple records, began at Isshin-ji in 1887.

The number is the weight of it. More than 130 years since the first casting, some two million of the dead now sit in the ossuary and bone buddha hall in the form of Amida. Eight images stand there now. Fourteen have been made in all; six from before the war were lost to war damage. Counted with the ones that burned, this temple’s last century and a bit is also Japan’s.

What people do here is not asking. To venerate a bone buddha, the temple explains, is at once to make offering to the dead and to make offering to the buddha. The one who is worshipped and the ones on whose behalf are the same. In 2005 the practice was designated an intangible folk cultural property of the city of Osaka.

It began with a hut. In 1185 Honen practised the meditation on the setting sun at the New Hermitage of Arahaka — the discipline of watching the sun go down in the west.

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. 納骨とお骨佛 — Isshin-ji (accessed 2026-08-14)
2. 歴史 — Isshin-ji (accessed 2026-08-14)