Zen Temple Panorama

Kencho-ji is the top temple amongst the Kamakura Five Great Zen Temples (Kamakura Gozan in Japanese) and is also the oldest monastery from Japan where Zen was taught and practiced. Over the history, Kencho-ji became one of the largest temples in Japan, with 49 sub-temples and 7 main buildings!

Today, the temple still impresses with its large number of buildings, even though the history was brutal and, after the Kamakura Period, Kencho-ji was hit by numerous disasters, including earthquakes and fires destroying all the buildings...

Some of the constructions were rebuilt with money from donations (like the Sanmon Gate), while for other buildings less common methods were used: the hall on the right of this photo, the Butsuden (Buddha Hall) was simply moved here from the Zojo-ji Temple from Edo (Tokyo)! This impressive task was accomplished in 1647, during the rule of the Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate...