Tsubosaka-dera

Quick facts

Address

3 Tsubosaka, Takatori, Takaichi, Nara

Spiritual entities

Avalokiteśvara (Kannon · Gwaneum, 観音菩薩)

About this place

Tsubosaka-dera is in Takatori, Nara, and is the sixth station of the Saikoku pilgrimage. It is said to have begun in 703, when the Gango-ji priest Benki, practising on this mountain, placed the crystal jar he always carried in a hermitage at the top of the slope and enshrined there a carved likeness of the Kannon he had perceived. The principal image is an eleven-headed thousand-armed Kannon. It is held to be a Kannon of proven efficacy against eye disease, and the temple is called the temple that seals off eye disease. The name of Tsubosaka-dera spread through the puppet play Tsubosaka Reigenki, the story of the blind husband Sawaichi and his wife Osato.

Origin and history

It is said to have begun in 703, when the Gango-ji priest Benki, practising on this mountain, placed the crystal jar he always carried in a hermitage at the top of the slope and enshrined there a carved likeness of the Kannon he had perceived.

The principal image is an eleven-headed thousand-armed Kannon. It is held to be of proven efficacy against eye disease, and the temple is called the temple that seals off eye disease.

The name of Tsubosaka-dera spread through the puppet play Tsubosaka Reigenki, the story of the blind husband Sawaichi and his wife Osato.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotHealth & Healing

  The temple that seals off eye disease

  The principal image is held to be a Kannon of proven efficacy against eye disease, and the temple is called the temple that seals off eye disease.

  documented history

• Origin

  A crystal jar at the top of the slope

  In 703 the Gango-ji priest Benki placed the crystal jar he always carried in a hermitage at the top of the slope and enshrined a likeness of the Kannon he had perceived.

  folk tradition

• What people do here

  A puppet play spread the name

  The name spread through Tsubosaka Reigenki, the story of the blind husband Sawaichi and his wife Osato.

  documented history

The devotion here is narrowed to one part of the body. The principal image is a Kannon of proven efficacy against eye disease, and the temple calls itself the temple that seals off eye disease — a temple for the eyes, by its own description. Hattori Tenjingu in Osaka is a shrine for the legs. Two places on this list answer to a particular part of the body.

The temple’s name is made of an object and a place. Benki put the crystal jar he always carried in a hermitage at the top of the slope — a jar, tsubo, and a slope, saka. What was placed, and where, became the name.

What carried the name outward was a play. The temple records that it spread through the puppet play Tsubosaka Reigenki, the story of the blind husband Sawaichi and his wife Osato. A story about a man who could not see carried the name of a temple for the eyes.

Benki, who founded it, was a priest of Gango-ji. Gango-ji is on this list, and so is Oka-dera, the seventh station of the Saikoku pilgrimage. This temple is the sixth. Two adjacent stations of the same circuit, both in Nara.

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. 壷阪寺について — Tsubosaka-dera (accessed 2026-08-15)
2. 壷阪寺 — Tsubosaka-dera (accessed 2026-08-15)