観音寺, Buddhist temple in Tarusaka district, Yokkaichi, Japan

Kannon-ji is a Tendai Buddhist temple on Mount Tarusaka in the Tarusaka district of Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture. Its main hall was rebuilt in the Showa era, while the mountain gate and bell tower survive from the 1691 reconstruction ordered by Matsudaira Sadashige, lord of Kuwana. The main image is a statue of Genzan Daishi.

Tradition holds that Saichō founded the temple in 815 after installing a Yakushi Nyorai statue attributed to Prince Shōtoku. In 928 the Tendai monk Ryōgen established a large complex at Tarusaka with support from Funaki no Yoshimi, but Oda Nobunaga's troops burned it in 1575. Matsudaira Sadashige, lord of Kuwana, rebuilt it in 1691; after a brief abolition in 1873 it was restored in 1883.

The temple's mountain name, Tarusaka-san, comes from its location in Tarusaka. Its main image is Genzan Daishi (Ennin), and the temple holds a wooden seated statue of Jikei Daishi designated an Important Cultural Property in 1913. A hanging poem-card frame dedicated by the Yokkaichi Bashō-ren poetry group is a city cultural property.

The temple is about 2 km south of the Yokkaichi-Higashi Interchange on the Higashi-Meihan Expressway, and about 3 km northwest of Kintetsu Kasumigaura Station on the Nagoya Line. The approach from the station is uphill toward the Tarusaka hill; a car or taxi covers the distance faster than walking.

The temple grounds once covered about 2 km in each direction and held 54 sub-temples, when Kannon-ji served as the Ise branch of the Tendai school; today's temple is the former inner sanctuary (oku-no-in) of that complex. The main hall was rebuilt in the Showa era, while the mountain gate and bell tower date from the 1691 reconstruction.