---
title: "Zenkōji: the temple in Nagano that welcomes everyone"
description: "Zenkōji in Nagano belongs to no sect and has long taken in anyone. Its hidden Amida image, the Gokaichō held once in seven years, and its 1707 main hall."
url: https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/zenkoji
language: en
published: 2026-11-11
category: "Places in Japan › Nagano"
tags: ["Nagano"]
author: "Oginoya Editorial Team"
publisher: "Oginoya Co., Ltd."
translations:
  zh-TW: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-tw/articles/zenkoji
  ko: https://kama-meshi.com/ko/articles/zenkoji
  zh-CN: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-cn/articles/zenkoji
  zh-HK: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-hk/articles/zenkoji
  th: https://kama-meshi.com/th/articles/zenkoji
  de: https://kama-meshi.com/de/articles/zenkoji
  fr: https://kama-meshi.com/fr/articles/zenkoji
  es: https://kama-meshi.com/es/articles/zenkoji
---

# Zenkōji: the temple in Nagano that welcomes everyone

![A large dark wooden temple hall with layered bark roofs and gilded gable ornaments, white curtains hung across its front and people at an incense burner below](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/zenkoji-main-hall-2020.Det3WSLa_Z9FKRN.webp)

Zenkōji is a Buddhist temple in the city of Nagano that belongs to no sect and has long been known for taking in anyone, whatever their sex or rank. Its principal image, an Amida triad that nobody is allowed to see, came to Japan in 552 according to the temple's founding legend, and its main hall, completed in 1707, is a National Treasure.

## An image no one sees

The principal image is the Ikkō Sanzon Amida Nyorai: Amida Buddha in the center, the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi on either side, and a single halo behind all three.

The founding legend says the image came from India by way of the Korean kingdom of Baekje and reached Japan in 552, when Buddhism itself arrived, and that Honda Yoshimitsu, a man from Shinano Province, carried it home. By the same legend the image was moved to the present site in 642, and in 644 a temple was built and named after him: the two characters of Yoshimitsu are also read Zenkō. Roof tiles dug up in the grounds show that a temple of some size stood here by the second half of the seventh century.

By the temple's account the image has been a *hibutsu*, a hidden Buddha, since 654. It rests in a closed cabinet on the Ruridan, the altar at the back of the main hall.

In the 1550s, during his battles with Uesugi Kenshin on the plain around Nagano, Takeda Shingen moved the image, the treasures and the priests to Kōfu, in today's Yamanashi Prefecture. The image returned to Zenkōji in 1598, after more than 40 years.

## The Gokaichō, once in seven years

The *maedachi honzon* is a copy of the hidden image, said to have been made in the Kamakura period (1185–1333), and an Important Cultural Property. It stays in the temple's treasury except during the Gokaichō, the largest event at Zenkōji, when it is brought into the main hall and shown. The Gokaichō is held once in seven years by the Japanese way of counting, in the years of the Ox and the Sheep, six years apart.

![A tall squared wooden pillar covered in brushed characters stands before a temple hall, with people pressing their hands to it and a white cord running from it to the hall](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/zenkoji-gokaicho-pillar-2015.BbA2aDp4_Z17TgcM.webp "The pillar in front of the main hall during the Gokaichō, April 2015.")

During the Gokaichō a wooden pillar about 10 meters tall stands in front of the main hall. A cord runs from the pillar to the right hand of the maedachi honzon, and touching the pillar is held to be the same as touching the image.

The Gokaichō of 2015 drew 7.07 million people. The Gokaichō due in 2021 was put off a year by the coronavirus pandemic and ran for 88 days in 2022, and the temple has set the following Gokaichō for 2027.

## A temple without a sect

Two schools of Buddhism maintain Zenkōji together: the Tendai school, through the temple Daikanjin, and the Jōdo (Pure Land) school, through the convent Daihongan. The head of Daikanjin and the head of Daihongan both serve as head priests of Zenkōji. Every day of the year, at sunrise, all the priests gather in the main hall for the *O-asaji*, a morning service held twice, first by Tendai and then by Jōdo.

In the Edo period (1603–1868) Zenkōji was known for teaching that anyone who prayed by calling on Amida would be led to the Pure Land, regardless of sex or rank. Women were numerous among its pilgrims, as votive paintings of the time show. "Go to Zenkōji once in your life," people said. About six million people visit the temple each year.

## The hall of 1707

Zenkōji has burned more than ten times. After the fire of 1700 the maedachi honzon was taken around the country for five years to raise money, and more than 20,000 ryō, the gold coin of the period, was given. The hall was finished in 1707 and designated a National Treasure in 1953.

The hall is about 27 meters high, 24 meters wide and 54 meters deep, and it stands on 108 pillars, the number of worldly desires counted in Buddhism. Seen from above, the roof ridge forms a T, and the style is called *shumoku-zukuri* after the *shumoku*, the T-shaped mallet that strikes a temple bell.

Inside the entrance is a statue of Binzuru, a disciple of the Buddha, which people have rubbed since 1713 at the spot where their own bodies ail. Under the Ruridan runs a pitch-dark corridor, the *O-kaidan meguri*, where visitors feel for the "lock of paradise" that hangs directly beneath the hidden image.

The Sanmon gate, in front of the hall, dates from 1750. In February 1998 the temple bell, cast in 1667, was rung at the opening ceremony of the Nagano Winter Olympics.

![A two-story wooden gate with a broad dark roof at the end of a stone-paved street, with stone lanterns and banners reading 信州善光寺 仲見世通り on both sides](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/zenkoji-sanmon-2019.Diy0o7FI_Z22zjFc.webp "The Sanmon gate of Zenkōji, April 2019.")

## Led by an ox

A story known across Japan since the Edo period tells of an old woman without faith in Chiisagata, in Shinano Province. An ox caught the cloth she was drying on its horn and ran off, and she chased the ox all the way to Zenkōji, where it vanished and she began to pray. The ox was Kannon in another form. "Led to Zenkōji by an ox" remains a proverb for being drawn into something unexpected by chance.

Pilgrims on the Nakasendō, the inland highway from Edo, today's Tokyo, crossed [the Usui Pass](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/nakasendo-usui) and rested at [Karuizawa](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/karuizawa-history). At Oiwake the Hokkoku Kaidō branched off the Nakasendō and ran through Komoro and Ueda to Nagano. The lodgings around the temple were tied to the Zenkōji [*kō*](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/omiyage-culture) of the various provinces, village groups that saved money to send a representative on pilgrimage.

## From temple town to city

Nagano began as the town at the gate of Zenkōji. A post station of the Hokkoku Kaidō was set up there in 1614, and by the end of the Edo period the town had more than 10,000 people. Nagano became the seat of the prefecture in 1871 and a city in 1897.

The railway from Naoetsu, on the Sea of Japan, reached Nagano in 1888, and in April 1893 [the rack railway over the Usui Pass](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/yokokawa-usui) completed the line from Ueno in Tokyo. Until October 1997 every train over the pass stopped at Yokokawa, where [Oginoya](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/oginoya-history) put [Tōge no Kamameshi](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/what-is-kamameshi), an ekiben in a clay pot, on sale on February 1, 1958. On October 1, 1997, [the Shinkansen from Takasaki to Nagano](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/hokuriku-shinkansen) opened.

## References

- [Zenkōji, "About the temple and its history"](https://www.zenkoji.jp/about/)
- [Zenkōji, "The main hall"](https://www.zenkoji.jp/about/hondou/)
- [Zenkōji, "The outer and inner sanctuaries"](https://www.zenkoji.jp/about/jin/)
- [Zenkōji, "The innermost sanctuary"](https://www.zenkoji.jp/about/nainaijin/)
- [Zenkōji, "Main buildings"](https://www.zenkoji.jp/about/syuyou/)
- [Zenkōji, "The legend: Led to Zenkōji by an ox"](https://www.zenkoji.jp/about/engi/)
- [Zenkōji, "Daily services"](https://www.zenkoji.jp/event/)
- [Zenkōji, "About the Gokaichō" (2027 special site)](https://gokaicho.zenkoji.jp/about.html)
- [Agency for Cultural Affairs, Cultural Heritage Online, "Zenkōji Main Hall"](https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/133538)
- [Kotobank, "Zenkōji"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%96%84%E5%85%89%E5%AF%BA-88191)
- [Kotobank, "Ushi ni hikarete Zenkōji-mairi"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%89%9B%E3%81%AB%E5%BC%95%E3%81%8B%E3%82%8C%E3%81%A6%E5%96%84%E5%85%89%E5%AF%BA%E5%8F%82%E3%82%8A-2236059)
- [Kotobank, "Hokkoku Kaidō"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%8C%97%E5%9B%BD%E8%A1%97%E9%81%93-133493)
- [Kotobank, "Nagano"](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%95%B7%E9%87%8E-587981)
- [Oginoya, chronology](https://www.oginoya.co.jp/tougenokamameshi/history/)

Image credits (resized for display):

- [Suicasmo / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Main_Hall,_Zenkoji_20201120.jpg), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), 2020
- [アルトクール / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zenk%C5%8D-ji_Gokaicho_2015.JPG), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), 2015
- [Zairon / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nagano_Zenko-ji_San-mon_03.jpg), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), 2019