Yamanaka Kannondo Hall 山中観音堂

Official explanation

Yamanaka Kannondo Hall at Sanage Shrine serves as a quiet reminder of how Shinto and Buddhism, now thought of as separate, were closely linked in Japan for more than a thousand years. The hall was built in the sixteenth century to house a statue of Senju Kannon, the thousand-armed bodhisattva of compassion, thought to have been carved in the late tenth century.

The hall was part of the Sanage shrine complex, which encompassed a vast number of different shrines, temples, and monasteries. The location chosen for the hall was a hillside some 300 meters northeast of the main shrine so that the deity could ward off evil spirits thought to come from that direction. The hall was associated with the shrine until the official separation of Shinto and Buddhism after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Following the government-ordered separation, many Buddhist structures and statues were destroyed. Yamanaka Kannondo is thought to have escaped this fate because the head priest of Sanage Shrine convinced the authorities that the hall was outside the shrine grounds and thus none of their concern.

Read the full explanation

Yamanaka Kannondo still houses the Senju Kannon statue, along with other Buddhist statues brought over from nearby halls that were torn down following the Shinto-Buddhist split. It is usually closed to the public.

出典: 地域観光資源の多言語解説文データベース（観光庁） — www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db. この英語解説文は観光庁の地域観光資源の多言語解説整備支援事業で作成しました。
Source: Japan Tourism Agency, Multilingual Explanation Database. This English text was produced by the Japan Tourism Agency's multilingual explanation project and is shown unedited. Opening hours and services may have changed since it was written.