Sado Seisuiji Temple

Seisuiji Temple was built based on the model of Kiyomizu-dera Temple (清水寺) in Kyoto. Both temple`s names are written with the same kanji but have different readings.

Emperor Kammu (50th emperor of Japan; 737-806) deeply believed in the principal deity of Kiyomizu-dera Temple, and lamented that people in the distant land of Sado could not easily visit Kyoto. In the 24th year of Enryaku (805), he sent an imperial decree to a priest to go to Sado. The priest visited the mountains of Sado`s Niibo-Ono area and found something shining in a stream. He searched for the source of the stream and spent the night in the roots of a pine tree. The next morning, when the priest awoke, a child shrouded in a brilliant light appeared and said to him, "This place is a place of great sorrow and manifestation. I hope you will build a temple, enshrine a Buddha statue, and make offerings in reverence so that your wishes may be fulfilled." The priest reported this event to the emperor. The emperor was so delighted that he sent an edict to the priest to establish this temple right at the spot where the event had occurred.

This is how Sado`s Seisuiji Temple was founded in 808.

It is a place with a special atmosphere where one can imagine to have traveled back in time a few hundred years because one can see and feel this temple`s age.