Sōgen-ji Temple, Buddhist temple in Naka-ku, Okayama, Japan

Sōgen-ji is a Rinzai-shū Myōshin-ji school Zen temple in Naka-ku, Okayama. Its two-story wooden Buddha hall has a dark tiled hip-and-gable roof, white plaster walls divided by dark timber beams, three upper windows, and a row of tall arched slat windows below, with small vents near the base. The grounds line up the main gate, three gates, and Buddha hall, with a bell tower right and drum tower left.

Sōgen-ji was founded in 1698 by Ikeda Tsunamasa, second lord of the Ikeda main line of the Okayama domain, to pray for his great-grandfather Tsunenaga and his father Mitsumasa. He had retainer Uesaka Geki build it and invited the monk Zetsugai to open the temple, which then served as the family burial temple of the Ikeda lords.

Sōgen-ji still accepts trainee monks, and today all of them except the abbot, Harada Shōdō, come from abroad. Their practice puts monks in cloud-and-water robes on the streets of central Okayama, where they are sometimes seen on alms rounds. Beside the main compound remain two sub-temples, Daikō-in of the Nichiren school and Tendaiji of the Tendai school.

The site is easily accessible by bus from JR Okayama Station, with a short walk from the stop to reach the grounds. The garden looks different in each season, so the experience changes depending on when you visit.

The temple's cemetery was created after the postwar land reforms stripped temples of their holdings; short of funds, Sōgen-ji entrusted part of its grounds to the Tokufukai association, which sold plots through a designated stone dealer, Kuramoto. The graves remain on the west side of the precincts.