Manju-ji Temple Gardens

 

Manju-ji Temple in Matsue has a delightful pond garden behind the main hall, and an extensive, well-manicured karesansui garden in the front.

It is a large Rinzai Zen temple at the top of the narrow Okutani valley to the north of the castle.

Entry to the temple and garden is free, but the temple remains off the tourist radar.

The temple was established in a different location in 1600, some years before the castle was built.

Its original name was Chojuin.

In 1644 it was moved to its current location after being given the site by Naomasa Matsudaira, the new daimyo of the castle.

At that time it was renamed Shobuyama Chojuji.

Later the name was changed to Manju-ji, though a big fire in 1848 destroyed all records, so the date is unknown.

When I visited in June, the azaleas were in bloom, which added to the visit.

One curious feature, seen in photo 4, is an Imperial Messenger Gate in front of the main hall.

To the right of the main hall is a Kannon Hall, and above it is a Myoken Shrine which enshrines Marishiten, Benzaiten, Daikokuten, and Aizen Myoo. From the shrine you can look down on the pond garden.

The front garden is quite sparse, but subtle.

One nice touch was the small turtle at the centre of the concentric circle of ridges.... exactly how it would appear when a turtle surfaces in a pond.

I can find no date or creator for the rear garden, but it appears to be fairly standard.

There is a small one-room teahouse.

And a few koi in the pond.

The previous post in this series on Matsue and Izumo was on Kanden-an, the remarkable samurai teahouse, villa, and gardens not too far from Monjuji Temple.

Matsue has an unusually large number of quality gardens, in large part due to the legacy of the great Tea Master, Fumai Matsudaira, the daimyo of Matsue Castle.

Some recent garden posts from Matsue I recommend would be Fumon-in temple, garden and Teahouse, the gardens at Lafcadio Heans House, and the garden at Gesshoji Temple.

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Garden at Taimasan Shrine

 

This is the second post on the garden at Taimasan Shrine. In the previous post, I showed how the garden looked in 2010, but this post is photos from a visit at the end of 2021.

In the second and third photos, a new garden has been built between the entrance to the shrine and the old temple garden. This new garden was built by the current head priest and is composed of two parts, Iwakura, and Iwasaka.

An Iwakura is a rock into which a kami descends, and an Iwasaka is a rock that mark the boundary of sacred space.

This makes this new garden very much a shinto garden.

The major difference in the main garden from when I visited 11 years earlier, is the white gravel area.

Also, this was the end of May, so some of the small trees are now full of leaves, and there are still a few flowers left on the azalea bushes.

For information on the history of the garden, please refer to the previous post.

The previous post in this series on  MountTaima, literally Hemp Mountain, was on the garden 11 years earlier....

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