Eifuku-ji Temple, Buddhist temple in Saitama Prefecture, Japan.
Eifuku-ji is a Shingon Buzan-ha temple in Shitakano, Sugito, Saitama Prefecture, with the mountain name Ryūtōzan and Amida Nyorai as its principal image. It is the Jurojin of the Sugito Shichifukujin pilgrimage. A pine known as Saigyo's Looking-Back Pine stands near the entrance.
Tradition credits the monk Gyōki with founding the temple in 753 under the name Amida-ji. It burned when the nun Myōki set fire to it after Gyōki's associate Prince Okiyo was killed in 940. It was revived by Nukiyama Ubasoku, said to be a son of Taira no Masakado, who found the buried wooden Amida statue. Later renamed Chōfuku-ji, it took the name Eifuku-ji; the temple's own record dates the change before 1759.
Eifuku-ji is the home of the Jurojin figure of the Sugito Shichifukuso pilgrimage, and every year on 22 and 23 August it holds the Dojo Segaki, counted among the three great segaki rites of the Kanto region. Worshippers chant sutras over a pond on the grounds and release lozenges there for beings who fell into hell through killing or wrongdoing in life. A local saying asks whether one met the wind or the rain of Takano's segaki, and families are said to attend for three years for the deceased.
Eifuku-ji is about a 12-minute walk from Sugito-Takanodai Station on the Tobu Nikko Line. The Dojo Segaki rite is held on 22 and 23 August, drawing crowds to the temple pond, so plan around those dates. The Nishi-kyo Mikaeri pine stands near the entrance.
The temple is the Jurojin figure of the Sugito Shichifukuso, a seven-deities pilgrimage circuit in Sugito. Near the entrance stands the Nishi-kuyo Matsu, a pine linked to the poet-monk Saigyo, who is said to have turned back to look at it.
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