Matsuo-dera

Quick facts

Address

683 Yamadacho, Yamatokoriyama, Nara

Spiritual entities

Avalokiteśvara (Kannon · Gwaneum, 観音菩薩)

About this place

Matsuo-dera is in Yamatokoriyama, Nara. It is recorded as built in 718 by Prince Toneri, son of Emperor Tenmu, who was then compiling the Nihon Shoki by imperial command; being forty-two and in his unlucky year, he made a vow for the safe completion of the book and for the warding off of misfortune. The principal image is a thousand-armed, thousand-eyed Kannon, kept hidden. The temple states that it is the oldest site in Japan for warding off misfortune, and is transmitted as especially efficacious. It is also described as a temple of imperial vow, praying for the flourishing of the country’s fortunes and the quiet of the state, and to have received the devotion of successive imperial houses.

Origin and history

It is recorded as built in 718 by Prince Toneri, son of Emperor Tenmu, who was then compiling the Nihon Shoki by imperial command; being forty-two and in his unlucky year, he made a vow for the safe completion of the book and for the warding off of misfortune.

The principal image is a thousand-armed, thousand-eyed Kannon, kept hidden.

The temple states that it is the oldest site in Japan for warding off misfortune, and is transmitted as especially efficacious. It is also a temple of imperial vow, praying for the flourishing of the country’s fortunes and the quiet of the state.

What it is locally associated with

• OriginProtection & SafetyWish Fulfillment

  A book, and an unlucky forty-second year

  Prince Toneri, compiling the Nihon Shoki, was forty-two and in his unlucky year, and vowed for the book’s safe completion and the warding off of misfortune.

  folk tradition

• Power spotProtection & Safety

  The oldest misfortune-warding site, by its own account

  The temple states it is the oldest such site in Japan. Oka-dera in Nara calls itself the first; this page reports both claims without settling them.

  folk tradition

• Power spot

  A hidden thousand-armed Kannon

  The principal image is a thousand-armed, thousand-eyed Kannon, kept hidden.

  documented history

This temple was built so that a book would be finished. Prince Toneri, compiling the Nihon Shoki by imperial command, made a vow for its safe completion and for warding off misfortune. Nowhere else on this list does a place exist because of a writing project.

The other half of the vow was an age. He was forty-two, in his unlucky year. Mizuma-dera in Osaka was built after Emperor Shomu fell ill at forty-two. The same single age turns up in two foundings.

The temple states it is the oldest site in Japan for warding off misfortune. But there is another temple in Nara with a claim of that shape: Oka-dera in Asuka calls itself the first site in Japan for warding off misfortune. This page does not settle which came first. It records that each temple makes its own claim, and stops there.

The principal image is a thousand-armed, thousand-eyed Kannon, kept hidden. As a temple of imperial vow, praying for the flourishing of the country’s fortunes and the quiet of the state, it is said to have had the devotion of successive imperial houses.

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. お寺の由来 — Matsuo-dera (accessed 2026-08-15)