Mibu-dera

Quick facts

Address

31 Mibunaginocho, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto

About this place

Mibu-dera is in Nakagyo, Kyoto, founded in 991 by the priest Kaiken. Its principal image is a life-prolonging Jizo, an Important Cultural Property. It drew the devotion of ordinary people as a temple for warding off misfortune and opening fortune, and its February rite for warding off misfortune at setsubun is an observance with about nine hundred years of history. It is also known as a temple connected with the Shinsengumi of the late Edo period, and the graves of members stand in the Mibu mound within the grounds.

Origin and history

Mibu-dera was founded in 991 by the priest Kaiken. Its principal image is a life-prolonging Jizo, an Important Cultural Property.

It drew the devotion of ordinary people as a temple for warding off misfortune and opening fortune. Its February setsubun rite for warding off misfortune is an observance with about nine hundred years of history.

It is also known as a temple connected with the Shinsengumi of the late Edo period, and grave markers of members stand in the Mibu mound within the grounds.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotProtection & Safety

  A temple for warding off misfortune

  The temple records that it drew the devotion of ordinary people as a temple for warding off misfortune and opening fortune.

  documented history

• What people do here

  A setsubun rite of nine centuries

  The February rite for warding off misfortune at setsubun has about nine hundred years of history.

  documented history

• Origin

  Founded in 991

  Founded in 991 by the priest Kaiken; the principal image is a life-prolonging Jizo.

  documented history

The temple says itself who kept its devotion going: ordinary people. It drew the devotion of ordinary people as a temple for warding off misfortune — and set beside the imperial and shogunal foundations that fill most of this list, that phrasing is the difference in character.

That devotion survives as a number. The February setsubun rite has about nine hundred years of history. Not many places on this list state, flatly, that an observance has been running for nine centuries.

It is also known for the Shinsengumi, whose members’ grave markers stand in the mound within the grounds. But that is a fact about burial, not about asking for anything.

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. 壬生寺 — Mibu-dera (accessed 2026-08-13)