Nachisan Seiganto-ji Temple

Nachisan Seiganto-ji, in the mountains above Nachikatsuura in Wakayama, is a Tendai Buddhist temple traditionally said to have been founded in the 4th century CE by an Indian ascetic, Ragyo Shonin, who is said to have first witnessed Nachi Falls and settled beside it. The temple's main hall was rebuilt in 1590 under the patronage of Toyotomi Hidetsugu after earlier structures were lost, and it remains the temple's principal worship space, enshrining an image of the eleven-faced Kannon. The site's most recognizable feature, a three-story pagoda, was rebuilt in reinforced concrete in 1972 after the original wooden structure had been lost, and today is one of Japan's most photographed religious structures for the way it frames views of Nachi Falls, Japan's tallest waterfall at 133 meters, directly behind it. Seiganto-ji is the first official temple (fudasho) on the 33-temple Saigoku Kannon pilgrimage circuit, one of Japan's oldest organized pilgrimage routes, dating in tradition to the 8th century. The temple sits immediately adjacent to Kumano Nachi Taisha shrine, connected by a stone stairway, illustrating the historical fusion of Buddhist and Shinto practice (shinbutsu-shugo) that characterized Japanese religion before the Meiji-era separation edicts of 1868. Visitors walk the temple grounds past the main hall and pagoda to a viewing platform that places the waterfall and pagoda in a single frame, the image most associated with the Kumano pilgrimage region.