Honnō-ji Audio Guide

Honnō-ji: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Honnō-ji temple

   Welcome to Honnō-ji temple, which the Japanese write as 本能寺. You are in the Nakagyo ward of central Kyoto, on Teramachi Street just south of Oike Street, in the neighborhood called Shimohonnojimaecho. That name means roughly the area in front of the lower Honnō-ji, so the temple is built into the address itself. This is the head temple of the Honmon branch of the Hokke school, a Nichiren Buddhist tradition. It has no mountain name, and its main object of devotion is the chant Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. Seven sub-temples belong to it today. Its name is known across Japan because of one night in 1582, the Honnō-ji Incident, when the warlord Oda Nobunaga met his end. Here is the twist to carry with you. The temple you are standing in is not the one where that night happened. This guide follows the temple's whole journey: its founding, its rise in Kyoto, its move to this spot, and the quiet corner of the grounds where Nobunaga is remembered.

2. 02

   A Temple Born From Dispute at Honnō-ji temple

   Honnō-ji temple began with a monk named Nichiryu, and the story starts with the Hokke tradition itself. Nichiren preached the Lotus Sutra in eastern Japan. Tradition says that two days before he died he called in his disciple's disciple Nichizo and asked him to carry the teaching to Kyoto. Nichizo went, faced pressure from the Mount Hiei monks, and founded Kyoto's first Hokke temple, Myohonji, later known as Myokenji. Nichiryu studied there from the age of 18, but conflicts inside the school drove him out. In 1415 he opened a temple called Honō-ji at Aburanokoji on Gojo Bomon, today's Bukkoji Street. In 1418 it was torn down by Myokenji's head, so Nichiryu fled to Kawachi, then to Amagasaki, where he founded Honkoji. He came back in 1429. With help from a Yuzen cloth merchant named Kosodeya Soku, he rebuilt the temple at Uchino. Then in 1433 a man named Nyoio-maru gave him land at Shijo Bomon. The temple was rebuilt there, and it took the name Honnō-ji. That is the name that has lasted.

3. 03

   The Street of the Sacred Title at Honnō-ji temple

   By the late medieval period, Honnō-ji temple was one of the 21 Hokke temples of Kyoto and enjoyed the protection of the Ashikaga shoguns. Its grounds were a full square block, with many sub-temples. After the Onin War, the townspeople who worked to rebuild Kyoto were mostly followers of the Hokke school. The city became known as the town of the Daimoku, the sacred title chant, and Honnō-ji flourished. Politics pushed that faith onto the battlefield. In 1532 the Kyoto strongman Hosokawa Harumoto first leaned on the Hongan-ji school to crush a rival. When the Hongan-ji followers got out of hand, he turned and allied with the Hokke school. Roughly 10,000 Hokke followers, by one reckoning, attacked and burned the Yamashina Hongan-ji. The reward was power. The Hokke followers were granted policing authority in the city and a measure of self-rule, and their influence grew. Soon afterward, they would be locked in fierce conflict with the Enryaku-ji monks of Mount Hiei.

4. 04

   Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and the Move to This Spot at Honnō-ji temple

   Now to the famous night. In the Honnō-ji Incident of 1582, Oda Nobunaga was attacked by the forces of Akechi Mitsuhide. It happened at the old Honnō-ji, not here. That site lay south of Takoyakushi on Aburanokoji Street, in the Yamada neighborhood, and a stone monument marks it today. In 1591 Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered the temple moved to its present location. The new halls were finished in 1592, on a vast plot that took in today's Oike Street and even the site of Kyoto City Hall. Archaeology has since added a twist. The old Honnō elementary school stood on the former site and closed in 1992. Excavations there uncovered remains from the time when the temple was Nobunaga's regular lodging in Kyoto. In 2007, work before an apartment building turned up roof tiles that appear to have been burned in the incident, in the sludge of an old moat. One round tile was marked with an older form of the character for no, the second character in the temple's name.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off from Honnō-ji temple

   Walk the grounds with that history in mind. In the southeast corner stands the memorial mausoleum for Nobunaga, with memorial towers beside it for the warriors who fell in the incident. There is also a ginkgo tree known as the fire-guarding ginkgo, said to have escaped the temple's repeated fires. Notice how quiet it feels, even though the lively Kawaramachi and Shinkyogoku districts are only a short walk away. Inside the grounds you will also find the Honnoji Daihoden treasure museum, and a hotel stands next door. The temple is about one minute on foot from Shiyakusho-mae station on the Tozai subway line. A short stroll along Teramachi Street brings you to the Nishiki Tenmangu shrine. As you leave, ask yourself which Honnō-ji you were standing in: the one Nobunaga knew, or the one rebuilt by devoted followers after Hideyoshi moved it. The answer shapes everything you have just seen.