Kongobu-ji and the Sacred Sites of Koyasan

Kongobu-ji, on Mount Koya in Wakayama, is the head temple of Shingon Buddhism, the esoteric sect founded by the monk Kobo Daishi (Kukai) after he established a monastic complex here in 816 CE. The present temple was formed in 1869 by merging two earlier temples, Seiganji and Kozanji, and today serves as the administrative center for the entire Koyasan religious community. The Ohiroma main reception hall, rebuilt in 1863 after a series of fires that repeatedly destroyed earlier structures, houses Kano-school sliding door paintings (fusuma-e) depicting willow trees, cranes, and landscapes. One chamber, the Yanagi-no-ma (Willow Room), is where the warlord Toyotomi Hidetsugu was ordered to commit ritual suicide (seppuku) in 1595 after falling out of favor with his uncle Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Behind the reception halls lies the Banryutei rock garden, completed in 1984 and, at 2,340 square meters, the largest karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden in Japan, its raked white granite gravel and 140 stones arranged to suggest two dragons emerging from clouds. The temple's Edo-period kitchen (daidokoro) survives with its original hearths and copper cauldrons once used to cook rice for as many as 2,000 resident monks. Visitors follow a self-guided route through the tatami-floored reception halls, past painted screens and historic artifacts, into the rock garden, with tea and a rice cracker served partway through. The wooden halls and gardens are maintained by the temple's resident monastic community as both an active place of worship and a preserved architectural record of Shingon Buddhist practice on the mountain.