Cultural Assets－Temples and Shrines

Located at the foot of Mount Fudatate on the border between Osaka Prefecture and Wakayama Prefecture, Enmyo-ji Temple belongs to the Myoshin-ji Temple branch of the Rinzai Zen school of Buddhism. The temple began as a sacred training site of the Katsuragi Shugen trail, where En no Gyoja is said to have buried the third chapter of the Lotus Sutra. The temple’s seven buildings were reconstructed in the 13th century. The temple compound was destroyed in the 16th century during Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s conquest of Kishu and subsequently fell into obscurity. A donation of land that included the temple’s former estate by the Kishu Tokugawa clan in 1693 led to the construction of the halls Fudo-do, Benten-do, and Konpira-do to reconstitute the temple as part of the Kokoku-ji branch of the Rinzai Zen school of Buddhism. Following the Meiji Restoration (1868), the temple became part of the school’s Myoshin-ji branch. Numerous pilgrims from Wakayama Prefecture and beyond gather during a ritual on the 28th of each month at the Goma-do in front of Fudotaki Falls. Here, Shugendo practitioners make offerings of burning wood (Goma fire ritual) and the chief priest performs a ritual known as Miso-fuji, in which miso paste is offered to the Fudo Myo-o deity in a prayer to heal illness.