Zuigan-ji

Zuigan-ji, formally Seiryūzan Zuigan Enpuku Zenji, stands a few minutes from the waterfront of Matsushima, the island-studded bay long counted among the three most scenic views of Japan. Tradition holds that the Tendai monk Ennin founded a temple here in 828; in the thirteenth century, under the Hōjō regents, it became a Zen temple called Enpuku-ji.

Its present form is the work of Date Masamune, the powerful lord of Sendai. Advised by his Zen teacher, Masamune rebuilt the temple between 1604 and 1609 with timber brought from Kumano and craftsmen from the Kyoto region. The main hall, originally the abbot's quarters, is a large single-storey building whose rooms are decorated with gilded sliding-door paintings of birds, flowers and Chinese themes by painters of the Kanō school; the vast kitchen building, with its dramatic gable, is equally a National Treasure.

The approach to the temple is lined with cedars and, on one side, with caves and niches cut into the soft tuff cliffs, once used for meditation and as memorials for the dead. The Date clan remained the temple's patrons throughout the Edo period, and the temple also looks after the Godaidō, the small hall on an islet in the bay that has become a symbol of Matsushima.

Zuigan-ji's early history is known mainly through tradition: a Tendai temple founded by Ennin in the Heian period, converted to Zen in the Kamakura period under Hōjō Tokiyori. By the Sengoku period it had declined.

Date Masamune's reconstruction, completed in 1609, gave the temple its buildings, paintings and the name Zuigan-ji. In 1636 the Zen master Ungo Kiyō became abbot and revived its monastic life. A major restoration, the 'Great Heisei Repair', was carried out from 2008 to 2018. The 2011 tsunami entered the precinct, and salt water killed many of the cedars along the approach.

Zuigan-ji was the family temple of the Date clan, and its architecture and paintings express the splendour of the Momoyama period as interpreted by one of its boldest lords. The main hall's lord's chamber, placed higher than the other rooms, reflects the hierarchy of the age, and the paintings range from hawks and pines to scenes of Chinese legend.

As a Zen monastery, Zuigan-ji is associated with Matsushima's role as a place of religious retreat: the caves along the approach and the small islands of the bay were used by monks for meditation. The poet Matsuo Bashō visited in 1689 on the journey recorded in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, describing the temple and the scenery of the bay.