Daisenji Temple was added to Your Favorites!
Daisen-Oki NP, Tottori
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Daisenji’s spring cattle fair grew from pilgrims comparing their animals. By the mid-Meiji era, it traded over 10,000 head a year, and sturdy cattle from the Oki Islands arrived by ship at Yodoe.
Daisen okowa is thought to have spread from the vegetarian rice served to Daisenji’s training monks. Portable and filling, it became a favorite packed meal for pilgrims and cattle traders.
Daisenji’s Daichimyō Gongen was understood as Jizō in divine form, guardian of travelers and children. Local legend says Jizō rose from a summit pond, linking the faith to life-giving water.
About 850 years ago, Daisenji monk Kiko encouraged buckwheat growing alongside livestock grazing on Daisen’s foothills. The soba later served at cattle fairs became the region’s signature noodle.
In Izumo’s land-pulling myth, a god used Daisen as a stake, tying ropes there while hauling land from across the sea to form the Shimane Peninsula. Daisenji stands on that legendary anchor.
After imported crossbreeding threatened local herds, Tottori began registering cattle in 1920, drawing on stock traded at Daisen’s fair. Those records later helped improve Japanese beef breeds.
Pilgrims brought cattle and horses to Daisenji for protection: animals drank sacred Riseisui as people prayed for their long lives, and protective talismans were placed on stable pillars back home.
Daisenji was a mountain community, not just a single hall: it held 3,000 koku of land and 42 monk residences across three precincts. Stone walls, earthen banks and paths still mark its old quarters.
When Daisenji flourished as a Shugendō training center, clean local water supported tofu-making for Buddhist vegetarian meals. Tofu shops along the temple approach still carry on this food tradition.
In an old Hōki custom, parents carried children to Daisenji for a first visit at counted age 2, then returned when they turned 13 to pray for health. They shared temple candy with villagers.
Daisenji’s Miyuki procession once featured 7 portable shrines and about 300 people. After disappearing for decades, it was revived by local residents in 1987 and again proceeds from Bakuroza to the temple.
On the old Yokotemichi route to Daisenji, the nearby Monjudō hall gave women a place to worship the mountain during periods when customs barred them from making the climb.
Meiji-era separation of Buddhist and Shinto worship abolished Daisenji’s name in 1875; its Daichimyō Gongen sanctuary became today’s Ōgamiyama Shrine Okumiya. When the temple name returned in 1903, only 10 of its 42 monk residences remained.
Floodwater swept away an earlier Amida Hall in 1529; the existing hall was rebuilt in 1552 and is Daisen Town’s oldest surviving building. Its broad timbers still show traces of Kamakura-era style.
A 1928 fire destroyed Daisenji’s main hall and its illustrated origin scroll, then designated a National Treasure. The original burned, but a copy survives in the University of Tokyo’s Historiographical Institute archive.
After the 1928 fire, Daisenji’s present main hall was rebuilt in wood in 1951, echoing medieval Japanese temple style. Nearby temples were choosing fire-resistant concrete, making Daisenji’s approach distinctive.
Part of Daisenji’s Misen Zenjō mountain retreat survived its 1875 suppression as Mōhitori, a rite at nearby Ōgamiyama Shrine. Each July, participants gather sacred summit water and medicinal mugwort.
