Kanzeon-ji

Quick facts

Address

5-6-1 Kanzeonji, Dazaifu, Fukuoka

About this place

Kanzeon-ji is in Dazaifu, Fukuoka. The temple gives its beginning as around the year 670 and names Emperor Tenji. The monk Genbo was later dispatched to the temple, and an ordination platform was established here, making it one of the three ordination platforms of the realm. Kukai’s name also appears in its chronology. In Hideyoshi’s time it faced the danger of being abolished, and it came through the Edo period to the present. It preserves the oldest temple bell in Japan designated a national treasure. Its chronology states neither a principal image nor any benefit that may be prayed for.

Origin and history

The temple gives its beginning as around the year 670 and names Emperor Tenji.

The monk Genbo was later dispatched to the temple, and an ordination platform was established here, making it one of the three ordination platforms of the realm. Kukai’s name also appears in its chronology.

In Hideyoshi’s time it faced the danger of being abolished, and it came through the Edo period to the present. It preserves the oldest temple bell in Japan designated a national treasure.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spot

  One of the three ordination platforms

  An ordination platform was established here, making it one of the three in the realm where the precepts of a formal priest were received.

  documented history

• What people do here

  The oldest temple bell in Japan

  It preserves the oldest temple bell in Japan designated a national treasure.

  documented history

• Origin

  From around the year 670

  The temple gives its beginning as around 670 and names Emperor Tenji; in Hideyoshi’s time it faced the danger of abolition.

  documented history

This temple held one of the places where a monk became a monk. An ordination platform was established here, making it one of only three in the realm where the precepts required to become a formal priest could be received. Todai-ji, on this list, held another; and Toshodai-ji in Nara was opened by Ganjin, who brought those precepts, as a place for people studying them. Three places tied together by a single institution — the qualification of a monk.

The temple also keeps the record of nearly ceasing to exist. In Hideyoshi’s time, the danger of abolition. On this list Nanzo-in in Fukuoka records the Meiji order abolishing its sacred sites, and Saidai-ji in Nara its lapse in the Heian period. The longer a temple lasts, the more likely it is to have nearly stopped.

Of what it preserves, what the temple names is the oldest temple bell in Japan designated a national treasure. Not a building but an instrument for making a sound.

The chronology begins around 670 and names Emperor Tenji. It does not, however, say why the temple was built. Neither a principal image nor a benefit is recorded, and this page states none of them either.

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 — Kanzeon-ji (accessed 2026-08-15)
2. 観世音寺 — Kanzeon-ji (accessed 2026-08-15)