Kiyomizu-dera

Quick facts

Address

1-294 Kiyomizu, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto

Spiritual entities

Avalokiteśvara (Kannon · Gwaneum, 観音菩薩)

About this place

Kiyomizu-dera stands on Otowasan in Higashiyama, Kyoto. By the temple’s account it began when Kenshin, a monk trained at Nara, received a dream telling him to leave for the south; the founding is put at 778. Kenshin met the warrior Sakanoue no Tamuramaro at the Otowa waterfall, and Tamuramaro, with his wife Miyoshi no Takako, built the temple with an eleven-headed thousand-armed Kannon as its principal image. The temple records that it drew deep devotion from those praying for worldly benefits: freedom from illness, advancement in life, and a good match.

Origin and history

Kiyomizu-dera records that the temple began when the monk Kenshin, trained at Nara, was told in a dream to depart for the south. The founding is placed at 778, and Kenshin later took the name Enchin.

The warrior Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, come to Otowasan to hunt deer, met Kenshin at the Otowa waterfall, and with his wife Miyoshi no Takako built the temple around an eleven-headed thousand-armed Kannon as principal image.

The clear spring Kenshin found came to be called the Otowa waterfall, and its water still rises today.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotHealth & HealingCareer & WorkLove & Romance

  Three worldly benefits

  The temple records deep devotion from people praying for freedom from illness, advancement in life, and a good match.

  documented history

• Origin

  A meeting at the waterfall

  Sakanoue no Tamuramaro met Kenshin at the Otowa waterfall and, with his wife, built the temple around a thousand-armed Kannon.

  documented history

• Power spot

  The Otowa waterfall still rises

  The clear spring Kenshin found came to be called the Otowa waterfall, and its water flows to this day.

  documented history

What this temple was asked for stands in a single sentence of its own: freedom from illness, advancement in life, a good match. The temple calls these worldly benefits, and says it was deeply venerated by people who wanted them.

The body, the career, the marriage. Put in today’s words that is health, work and a partner — and the order has not changed in twelve hundred years.

It began with water too. The spring Kenshin found became the Otowa waterfall, and the temple’s name — clear water — comes from it.

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 — 音羽山 清水寺 — Kiyomizu-dera (accessed 2026-08-13)
2. 祈る — 音羽山 清水寺 — Kiyomizu-dera (accessed 2026-08-13)