Chōryū-ji, Buddhist temple in Gujō, Japan
Chōryū-ji is a Tendai Buddhist temple in Gujō, Gifu Prefecture, sharing a single approach with Nagataki Hakusan Shrine: the temple stands on the left of the path, the shrine on the right. Its main image is a trio of Shakyamuni statues. The present halls are Shōwa-era reconstructions after an 1899 fire.
Founded by Taichō in 718 under imperial order as a Hossō school temple, Chōryū-ji was converted to the Tendai school in 828. At its height in the Kamakura period it controlled six valleys, six cloisters, over thirty shrines and 360 sub-temples. In 1868 the Meiji separation of Shinto and Buddhism split it from Nagataki Hakusan Shrine; a fire in 1899 destroyed the halls, and the present buildings date from the Shōwa era.
The name Chōryū-ji comes from the Amida-ga-taki waterfall that Taichō found after a goddess told him in a dream of a sacred spring. Until the Meiji separation of 1868 the temple was Hakusan Chūgū Nagataki-dera, and its precinct was shared with Nagataki Hakusan Shrine; the approach path still divides them, temple left, shrine right. The shrine's Rokujitsu festival flower hats are made at the sub-temple Amnyō-in.
Chōryū-ji shares a single approach with Nagataki Hakusan Shrine: from the path, the temple is on the left and the shrine on the right. The precinct is in Nagataki, Shirotori-chō, Gujō, a short walk from Nagataki Station on the Nagaragawa Railway. The main hall is a Shōwa-era reconstruction, so visitors should not expect the vast Edo-period Daikōdō.
The temple name comes from Amida-ga-taki, the waterfall Taichō found after a goddess told him in a dream of a sacred spring. The temple keeps a Song-dynasty printed Buddhist canon of 3,754 fascicles, a National Treasure, now held at the Hakusan Ryūhōden museum.
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