Ryosen-ji

Quick facts

Address

3879 Nakamachi, Nara

About this place

Ryosen-ji is in Nara and its principal image is Yakushi Nyorai. The minister of the right, Ono no Tomihito, resigned office in 672 and withdrew to Mount Tomi. From the fifth day of the fourth month of 684 he kept a retreat of twenty-one days at Kumano Hongu, and during it he perceived Yakushi Nyorai and healed the illnesses of many people. In 734 Emperor Shomu commanded the bodhisattva Gyoki to build the great hall. In the eighth month of 736 the Indian brahmin monk Bodhisena came to Japan and, because the lie of the land at Mount Tomi looked just like Vulture Peak, reported to the throne that the temple should be named Ryosen-ji. The Koshinuke Jizo in the precinct is held to be highly effective against pain in the lower back.

Origin and history

The minister of the right, Ono no Tomihito, resigned office in 672 and withdrew to Mount Tomi. From the fifth day of the fourth month of 684 he kept a retreat of twenty-one days at Kumano Hongu, and during it he perceived Yakushi Nyorai and healed the illnesses of many people.

In 734 Emperor Shomu commanded the bodhisattva Gyoki to build the great hall.

In the eighth month of 736 the Indian brahmin monk Bodhisena came to Japan and, because the lie of the land at Mount Tomi looked just like Vulture Peak, reported to the throne that the temple should be named Ryosen-ji.

What it is locally associated with

• OriginHealth & Healing

  Perceived at Kumano, and many healed

  Ono no Tomihito kept a twenty-one-day retreat at Kumano Hongu from the fifth day of the fourth month of 684, perceived Yakushi Nyorai and healed the illnesses of many people.

  folk tradition

• Origin

  An Indian monk gave it the name

  In the eighth month of 736 Bodhisena reported to the throne that the temple should be named Ryosen-ji, the ground at Mount Tomi looking just like Vulture Peak.

  documented history

• What people do hereHealth & Healing

  A Jizo for the lower back

  The Koshinuke Jizo in the precinct is held to be highly effective against pain in the lower back.

  local custom

This temple was named by someone from outside. Bodhisena, an Indian brahmin monk who arrived in the eighth month of 736, found that the lie of the land at Mount Tomi looked just like Vulture Peak, and reported to the throne that the temple should be called Ryosen-ji. A temple in Nara took its name from a resemblance to a mountain in India — and only a man who had seen both could have made the comparison.

The beginning is a retirement. The minister of the right, Ono no Tomihito, resigned office in 672 and withdrew to Mount Tomi. Afterwards he kept a twenty-one-day retreat at Kumano Hongu, and during it, the temple transmits, he perceived Yakushi Nyorai and healed the illnesses of many people. That one sentence about healing is where the devotion here starts, and the principal image is Yakushi Nyorai.

The great hall was built by the bodhisattva Gyoki, on Emperor Shomu’s command in 734. Gyoki’s name is transmitted at Mizuma-dera in Osaka and at Musashi Mitake Shrine and Takaosan Yakuo-in in Tokyo.

In the precinct stands the Koshinuke Jizo, held to be highly effective against pain in the lower back — one Jizo for one part of the body, in a temple that began with illness in general.

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Sources

1. 縁起と沿革 — Ryosen-ji (accessed 2026-08-15)