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Akaiwa · JP

Shomyo Temple

Tucked into the quiet rice-growing village of Hieda in Akaiwa, Okayama, Shomyo Temple (龍華山正妙寺) is a working place of worship belonging to an extraordinarily rare Buddhist tradition — the Nichiren Fuji Fusshu sect, the sole surviving school that upholds Nichiren's strictest doctrinal principle of "not accepting or giving" across seven centuries of faith and fierce persecution. In 1666, the Tokugawa shogunate branded this sect a heretical order and banned it outright. The local feudal lord, Ikeda Mitsumasa of Okayama domain, abolished 313 Fuji Fusshu temples in the province and expelled 585 priests. Believers went underground for 211 years, only gaining official reinstatement in 1876. This small village temple is a living thread back to that clandestine history.