Garden at Kozanji Temple

 

The garden at Kozanji Temple in Chofu, Yamaguchi, is neither well-known nor well-visited, though the temple itself and its grounds are usually crowded.

Kozanji is the 19th temple on the 33 temple Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, and that was the reason for my visit. 

It's a large, Zen temple whose main hall is a National Treasure as it is one of the oldest Kara-yo buildings left in Japan. Kara-yo is the Chinese-influenced temple architecture that was introduced along with Zen in the 13th century and so is strongly associated with the Zen sects.

While wandering the grounds I was approached by a priest who engaged me in conversation. Foreign visitors to the temple are certainly not rare, so maybe he was intrigued by my pilgrim jacket.

Anyway, it was he who suggested I seek out and visit the garden which is tucked away at the side of one of the main halls and seems to have been designed to be viewed from what I presume to be the abbots residence.

Since 2020, photography of the garden has been forbidden, but not when I visited in 2014.

The buildings that view the gardenm,... the shoin, kuri, and walkway between them, were built in the late Edo Period, so it is believed that is when the garden was built.

It has a long, shinji pond, but most of the garden is moss.....

Unfortunately, the strong shadows and bright sunlight made it harder to appreciate the garden....

I suspect an overcast day might be better to appreciate the moss.....

The previous post in this series on November 27th, 2014, day 25 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, was on the old samurai district near the temple.

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