Hōdōin Temple Site

Hōdōin was a Shingon temple located in Ōmiya (now central Fujinomiya) that served as the bettō temple of Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha.

Zōen, who is regarded as the temple’s restorer, received land for goma fire rites from Imagawa Yoshimoto in 1551 (Tenbun 20). When the Takeda took control of Suruga, he was appointed bettō. In 1578 (Tenshō 6), Takeda Katsuyori issued regulations decreeing that Hōdōin should take the highest seat whenever the great Shingon temples of Suruga gathered for prayers, illustrating the temple’s high status among the Shingon temples of Suruga. Records of the bettō from the Tenshō era into the early Kan’ei era are scarce. Even so, Genga, who appears to have served as bettō during this time, was a scholar monk who restored Kaikōin, one of the monks’ lodges at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū in Kamakura, and later lived at major temples in Dewa and Hitachi (Tsurugaoka Hachimangū-ji Gusō Shidai).

During the Edo period, the Shinto priesthood at Sengen Taisha was headed by the Grand Priest, supported by his deputies, the kumon and the anju, while the shrine monks were led by the bettō. Under shogunate rules, the shrine’s administration was decided by a council of these four houses: the Grand Priest, the bettō, the kumon, and the anju. As head of the shrine monks, the bettō held equal rank with the Grand Priest. In an era when Asama no Ōkami was revered as Sengen Daibosatsu, Buddhist rituals were essential to the rites, and Hōdōin performed them. In 1641 (Kan’ei 18), Tokugawa Iemitsu gave the temple a vermilion-seal grant of temple land of more than 136 koku, an endowment that later shoguns continued to reconfirm. In the late Edo period, the post of bettō was held by a succession of monks born in or near Ōmiya who were appointed after serving as head priest at Hōshakuji, the family temple of the Grand Priests.

The final bettō was Kenkō, a native of Awa Province who had studied on Mt. Kōya and assumed the post in 1862 (Bunkyū 2). The separation of Shinto and Buddhism in 1868 (Meiji 1) brought sweeping changes to this arrangement. When Prince Arisugawa, commander of the imperial expedition to the east, reached Sunpu, Kenkō offered him fifty ryō in gold. Kenkō then traveled to Kyoto to petition to return to lay life, took the name Fuji Shin’ichirō, and declared himself ōkannushi, or chief priest. The other shrine monks likewise returned to secular life; the monk of Seitaiin, for example, took the name Seitai Daijirō. With that, Hōdōin’s existence as a temple came to an end, closing the long era of combined kami and buddha worship at Sengen Taisha.

No buildings remain at the site, which is now an empty lot surrounded by a fence.