Yunotsu: Sainenji Temple 温泉津伝建・西念寺

Official explanation

Sainenji’s dramatic mountainside location suggests that this Buddhist temple must have taken enormous effort to build. Its once modest plot of land was originally occupied by a Zen sanctuary, which had fallen into disuse by 1561. This was the year that the Mohri family, who lorded over Iwami Ginzan and the surrounding area at the time, donated the land to a group of Jodo (Pure Land) Buddhists. Led by a monk named Nenkyu, these believers enlisted the help of Mohri clansmen, who went to work cutting into the rock, removing large chunks of the mountain until they had expanded the site sufficiently.

The project also included establishing a road from Yunotsu to nearby Okidomari, a port that the Mohri used mainly for silver shipments. This road passed right in front of Sainenji, which is also known to have functioned as a place of asylum for travelers in need of protection. The path remains walkable today, but has been moved slightly; you can find it behind the temple’s closed side gate, which faces the main hall, rebuilt in 1879. The cemetery on the mountainside, behind the main hall, is far older: its earliest tombstones date back to the first half of the seventeenth century.

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Yunotsu: Sairakuji Temple and Ekoji Temple

These two Buddhist temples stand side by side at the foot of the steep cliffs that separate the town of Yunotsu from the forest. In fact, both Sairakuji and Ekoji were built partially on land obtained by removing bits of these rock walls; this task was undertaken to expand the cemeteries. Sairakuji, dedicated to the Buddha Amida Nyorai (Sanskrit: Amitabha), is the older temple. It was originally a Zen temple, but was converted to a Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) sanctuary in 1521; its current buildings date to 1831. The term “sanctuary” here has both religious and literal meaning: Sairakuji was traditionally a so-called muenjo (“unaffiliated place”), meaning that the temple was exempt from certain laws and obligations, and provided asylum for believers in need of protection.

Ekoji is a Nichiren Buddhist temple and has an interesting cemetery. Its distinctive, wall-like structures with small tiled roofs house the graves of local people who worked in the shipping business on the busy route between Osaka and Hokkaido along the Sea of Japan coast beginning in the late seventeenth century. The tombstones on the far left, along the cliffside, are even older; some date back to the early Edo period (1603–1867).

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.