Injoji Temple (Senbon Enmado Hall) 引接寺（千本ゑんま堂）
Official explanation
[HEIAN / KITANO-NISHIJIN]
In Buddhist cosmology, the underworld is ruled by a deity known as Enma, who passes judgment on the souls of the dead. Injoji Temple is dedicated to the worship of Enma and has stood on its current site since the eleventh century, when this place was at the very edge of Kyoto. North of here were the city’s burial grounds, so the temple was said to mark the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead.
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The main hall contains a 2.4-meter-tall statue of Enma, carved in 1488 and flanked by statues depicting his attendants: a judgment reader and a record taker. The former holds a scroll that contains all the deeds of mortal beings and is used to determine their destination in the underworld. These statues can be viewed on the 16th day of every month, or “Enma Day,” when the resident priest performs a memorial service in the hall.
As Injoji Temple conflates Enma with the bodhisattva Jizo, the savior of all sentient beings, and treats them as the same deity, many stone statues of Jizo stand outside the main hall and throughout the temple grounds. Some of these statues are hundreds of years old and have been excavated from locations along the road that once led to the burial grounds.
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.
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