AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Pokkuri-san is the affectionate name for a small, locally venerated Jizō statue housed in the Kaizan-dō (founder's hall) of Konjō-in, the Shingon temple in Kamiyamaguchi better known as Yamaguchi Kannon. Reached from Seibu-Kyōjō-mae Station on the Seibu Sayama Line, the temple is set along the Sayama Hills by the Yamaguchi reservoir, and its pin on the map preserves the name of this one curious, quietly revered image among a complex far larger than it first appears.↗↗↗
The temple itself is the kind of place that rewards a slow walk around the back of the main hall, where a red pagoda crowns a low hill, a tunnel of copied Shikoku pilgrimage stations runs under the grounds, and rows of Tibetan-style prayer wheels line the walls. Pokkuri-san sits at the heart of all this, a tiny devotional focus inside a site packed with art, legend and architecture.↗↗
The little Jizō behind the name
In Japanese, "pokkuri" is an onomatopoeia for a painless, sudden passing — the wish to slip away without long suffering. Pokkuri Jizō embodies that hope. According to an information board on the grounds, the image was brought back from Kōyasan by the temple's eighteenth abbot, Ryōsei, during the Genroku era, modeled on a "guiding Jizō" that shows Kōbō Daishi turning his head at the moment of his passing into nirvana. Devotees believe that those who place their faith in this Jizō will not be tormented by lingering illness but will be gently escorted to the Pure Land.
