霊巌寺, Buddhist temple in Yame, Japan.
Reiganji is a Rinzai-shu Myoshinji-sect temple in Kasahara, Kurogi-machi, Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture, with the mountain name Daitan-zan and Senju Kannon as its main image. The temple grounds are a Fukuoka Prefecture-designated natural monument because of the strange rocks that fill the precinct. It is the final, 33rd stop on the Chikugo Thirty-Three Kannon pilgrimage.
Reiganji was founded in 1423 (Ōei 30) by the monk Eirin Shuzui, with Matsuo Hisaie as its founding patron. Shuzui had seen Lingyan Temple in Suzhou, Ming China, and gave this temple the same name because the landscape resembled it. A portrait statue of Shuzui was made in 1570 (Eiroku 13).
Eirin Shuzui, the temple's founder, is said to have planted tea seeds he brought back from Suzhou in Ming China within the grounds, and the temple is recorded in the Dazaifu Kanchi Shi as the birthplace of Yame tea. Each year on the 88th night of spring, at the height of the tea-picking season, a tea-offering ceremony (kencha-sai) is held in his memory.
Reiganji stands in Kasahara, Kurogi-machi, Yame, about 24 km from the Yame Interchange on the Kyushu Expressway. By public transport, take a Horikawa bus bound for Kurogi from JR Hainuzuka Station on the Kagoshima Main Line, get off at the terminus, then continue about 18 minutes by taxi. The precinct is a designated natural monument, so stay on the paths among the rocks.
The temple grounds and their cluster of strange rocks are a Fukuoka Prefecture-designated Natural Monument. The rocks are the reason the site is protected, not only the temple buildings. Visitors walking the precinct pass through this protected geological area.
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