Rinnoji Temple, Kongohozan

Built in 1441 by Date Mochimune, the 11th head of the Date clan, this family temple is well known for its beautiful kaiyu-style Japanese garden. Especially from June to July, irises bloom around the pond.

Zen Garden

The Rinnoji Zen Garden, with its soaring three-story pagoda, is known as one of the most famous gardens in Tohoku. The garden’s beauty is enhanced by cherry blossoms, iris, hydrangea, lotus, and other flowers in spring and summer, gorgeous autumn leaves in fall, and pine trees surrounded by snow hangings in winter. The seasonal changes in nature are atmospheric and give us a deep sense of peace and tranquility.

Three-storied Pagoda

The three-story pagoda enshrines a seated statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, and is open to the public on the 1st and 15th of each month. The 7.8 meter high five-story pagoda, built of natural stone, contains 2,600 volumes of the Heart Sutra as a memorial to the dead of war.

Zazen

The temple has a zazen hall where regular zazen and sesshin zazen meetings are held and open to the public. Zazen in the Soto school of Zen Buddhism is “takkan-daza” (just sitting still). Please try to sit with your body and mind united, without getting caught up in anything.

History of Rinnoji

Rinnoji Temple was founded in 1441 by Date Mochimune, the 11th generation of the Date clan, and later moved from place to place as the Date family moved from one castle to another.

In the Edo period (1602-1868), it was moved to its current location after the opening of Sendai by Masamune Date, the first lord of the Sendai domain.

Under the patronage of the Date family, the temple flourished as one of the major Soto sect’s forests in Oshu and was known as “Kaito Zen Cave” for over 300 years.

After the Meiji Restoration, Rinnoji lost the support of the Date family and was devastated by a wild fire in 1876 that burned down all seven halls of the temple except for the Niomon gate.

However, it was rebuilt in 1903 with the support of Eiheiji and Sojijiji temples. Monk Mugei and Monk Goho rebuilt the temple and gardens, including the present main hall, a storehouse, and a tea ceremony room called “Hanshakuan,” and the garden became one of the most famous gardens in the Tohoku region.

In 1981, the three-story pagoda was built to restore the scenery of olden times, and in 2004, cedar trees along the approach to the temple were cut down for construction of an urban planning road, but trees were planted to create a new approach to the temple, which was completed. More than 30,000 trees have been planted on the temple grounds, nurturing the original forest of the land.

Temple Name

The temple name “Rinnoji” is an abbreviation for Kinrin-oji Temple, which exists in more than one name. When Emperor Godaigo established a base in Yoshino during the Nanbokucho period (1644-1644), he renamed the temple Kinrino-ji Temple after Jissho-ji Temple, a sub-institution of Kinpusen-ji Temple, as the gyoomiya.

Tokugawa Ieyasu used this name and made it the name of a Tendai sect monastery that also served as Kan-eiji Temple in Ueno and Manganji Temple in Nikko. Rinnoji Temple in Sendai is a Soto Zen temple closely associated with the Date family of the Sendai domain.