Gyokusen-ji (Akikawa Fudōson)

实用信息

• Buddhist temple
• 7 kmfrom Akiruno center
• Restroom
• 3.7 / 529 reviews
• Akiruno

A three-hundred-year-old temple in western Tokyo

Gyokusen-ji takes its formal mountain name Jūhō-zan ("Vulture Peak") and its informal nickname Akikawa Fudōson from the Akikawa River valley nearby. The exact founding is lost, but the present main hall, gate and bell tower were completed around Genroku 4 (1691), and an inscribed old bell suggests an earlier hall stood by the Tama River before the temple moved to its current site. In the Edo period it received a 20-koku land grant from the third shōgun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, marking it as a temple of some local standing.↗↗

After the Meiji Restoration the temple buildings were put to a thoroughly secular use: from 1873 to 1891 they served as the classrooms of Ninomiya Elementary School, the forerunner of today's Higashi-Akiruno Elementary. That practical past is part of why the place still feels like a community living room rather than a remote monument.↗↗

Images and a gate unlike any other

The principal image enshrined here is Amida Nyorai (Amitabha), a wooden seated figure donated by a wealthy local farmer in 1695 and flanked by the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi. Yet the statue most visitors remember is the Fudō Myō-ō seated in the hall, said to have been carried from Narita-san in the early Meiji years and celebrated as the largest wooden Fudō image in the West Tama region. This is the figure honored in the temple's monthly fire rituals and the reason for its "Akikawa Fudōson" nickname.↗↗↗

Even the gatekeepers are unconventional. The pair of Niō guardian statues flanking the gate were reimagined by the twenty-ninth abbot as a prayer for world peace: instead of the clubs and weapons they normally brandish, they cradle infants, and doves settle on their shoulders. Around the grounds you find the same tender, human scale—a Peace Kannon and an Ebisu figure housed inside two great barrels once used for brewing soy sauce, and a child-rearing Jizō smiling beneath a tall Japanese red pine.↗↗

Trees, blossoms and the turning seasons

The garden is a big part of the temple's charm. A great hackberry (enoki) tree, designated a city natural monument, has a wisteria vine spiraling up its trunk, while maples, firs and red pines are chosen among Akiruno's "notable and giant trees." Early in April the grounds stay pink for about two weeks as higan cherry, somei-yoshino and mountain cherry bloom in succession; in autumn the maple turns a deep red. A hollow-trunked persimmon tree that still bears fruit is one of the scenes listed among Akiruno's 100 Views.↗↗

Rituals worth timing your visit around

For generations Gyokusen-ji was the local "Jūya" (お十夜) temple, the heart of Pure Land devotion in the Akikawa valley, where a rare gong-and-chant nembutsu rite was performed for ten nights each autumn around the mid-tenth lunar month with a lively fair. Old as that tradition is, the temple's regular rhythm today is the monthly Fudō fire ritual (goma) held on the 28th, when worshippers burn gōma wood to pray for safety at home, success in wishes and prosperity in business. The spring edition, the Ninomiya Fudōson enni goma-daki, has in recent years drawn rows of small stalls—freshly roasted coffee, wooden dishes, flowers, leather goods, paintings, garden vegetables—and even a corner of old-fashioned toys like be-go spinning tops, turning the day into a neighborhood gathering.↗↗

Other points on the calendar include the ringing of the New Year's bell and a first fire ritual on 1 January, the Nirvana assembly (Nehan-e) on 15 February when a large painting of the Buddha's passing is displayed, the Flower Festival on 8 April, and an Obon memorial service on 16 July.↗

Getting there and visiting

Gyokusen-ji sits in Ninomiya, about a seven- to nine-minute walk from Higashi-Akiruno Station on the JR Itsukaichi Line, and roughly eight minutes by car from the Akiruno or Hino exits of the Ken-Ō Expressway. It lies within easy reach of the Akikawa River valley, so it pairs well with an afternoon of nature walks in western Tokyo. As with any working temple, the open halls and grounds are best enjoyed with quiet respect—save the liveliest, most welcoming atmosphere for the monthly gōma day on the 28th.↗↗↗