Goshin-ji

Goshin-ji belongs to the Jodo (Pure Land) school whose head temple is Chion-in in Kyoto, and the temple bears the mountain name Kohō-san and the hall title Jōgō-in. Its founding tradition records that in 1366 Zenchū Jakuō, a leading disciple of the fourth Shōmyō master of the Jodo Fujita lineage, established the cloister after arriving from the Kantō region into the Mikawa coast; each year on 14 March the temple still observes the death-day memorial of the master Shandao.↗↗

From modest beginnings it grew into one of the most powerful monasteries in the region, once grouped as one of the "Yoshida three great temples" alongside Ryūnen-ji and Jingū-ji, and described in Toyohashi histories as the leading temple of the old Yoshida castle town. At its height it held twenty-four branch sub-temples, and after the castle era its precincts were moved from the Sannomaru quarter of Yoshida Castle to the present Sekiyacho site when Imabashi Castle was built. The temple is also station ten on the Hōnen Shōnin pilgrimage circuit of twenty-five Mikawa sites.↗↗↗