Myōtsū-ji Temple, Buddhist temple in Obama, Japan
Myōtsū-ji is a Buddhist temple in Obama featuring a three-story pagoda rising roughly 22 meters with a decorative finial above. The complex includes subsidiary buildings and gardens arranged across the hillside.
Temple records dated 1374 state that Sakanoue no Tamuramaro founded Myōtsū-ji in 806. The temple burned three times, and the present Hondō was built between 1258 and 1265 under the monk Raisen, with the three-storey pagoda completed in 1270. Both are National Treasures.
The honzon is a seated Yakushi Nyorai, 144.5 cm tall and made of joined wood, likely carved after one of the temple's three fires. Beside it stand a 252.4 cm Gōzanze Myōō and a 256.6 cm Jinja Taishō, a rare sculpted guardian with a skull on its head and a girl's head at its stomach.
The temple is at 5-22 Monzen, Obama, reached by the Aiai bus from Higashi-Obama Station on the Obama Line in about nine minutes. The Hondō and pagoda stand on a stone-walled base, and the main hall's front is fitted with sliding lattice doors. The temple has a pond garden.
The three-storey pagoda's first storey uses kobushibana, fist-shaped carvings at the ends of beams, considered the oldest such use on a Japanese pagoda. Its roof was tiled from 1894 until 1957, when repairs restored the original cypress-bark covering.
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