Toyokawa Inari Osaka Betsuin, Buddhist temple in Tennōji-ku, Japan
Toyokawa Inari Osaka Betsuin is a Sōtō Zen temple whose formal name is Kannon-ji, a branch temple of Toyokawa Inari Myōgon-ji in Aichi Prefecture. Its two-storey main hall has the eleven-faced Kannon on the ground floor and the Dakini-ten Inari hall upstairs, reached directly by an outside staircase. Beside it stands the Oku-no-in, where Hachirō Inari is enshrined.
In 1898 the local landowner Rihē Hagita enshrined Dakini-ten from Toyokawa Inari and built an Inari hall here. Around 1905 Myōgon-ji transferred its branch temple Kannon-ji to this site, and with Myōgon-ji's abbot Kaken Mokudō as founder, the Osaka Betsuin was established as a formal temple. Until the second abbot, an appointed representative sent from Myōgon-ji held the post.
The temple is known as a deity of prosperous business, drawing many devotees from the small shopkeepers of the commercial city of Osaka, though this following is said to have changed as shops pass between generations. In 1908 about a thousand copies of a prayer book (gongyō shidai) were distributed here, adapting the rites to Dakini-ten set by Tōkai Giei, founder of Myōgon-ji, for lay use; the head temple does not issue such a book.
The temple is about a three-minute walk from Momodani Station on the JR Osaka Loop Line. The main hall on the ground floor honours the Eleven-Faced Kannon, while the Inari hall on the second floor is reached by an outside staircase.
In the hall beside the main building stands Hachihei Inari, a fox that served the monk Tōkai Gieki and prepared meals for Dakini-ten. The temple also issues its own prayer book: about a thousand copies were distributed in 1908, adapting Tōkai Gieki's ritual for lay use.
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