Buddhism in Japan

These 33 Zen Buddhist temples were built to protect the nearby castle.

A grand Buddhist temple with Indian influences.

A rare north-facing Ksitigarbha statue enshrined in a passageway off Osaka’s busiest area.

This temple is home to a group of Buddha statues made from thousands of bones and ashes of the deceased.

Take a lick of the legendary homemade miso paste that protected this Buddhist temple’s scrolls from a fire centuries ago.

A sacred place for ascetic training, set in a honeycomb-walled cliffside cave deep in the woods.

Local legend claims that this is the final resting place of an infamous cannibal hag.

This compact temple is filled with garlands of colorful balls that represent restrained monkeys.

A giant statue of the Buddhist goddess of mercy watches over the town of Ōfuna.

An old woman cured cholera in the 1820s and now her grave is said to be the city’s most cursed object.

In the former treasury of a popular temple, a rare sculptural depiction of Kannon’s diverse avatars.

For but one summer in 1975, this rural suburb became a busy tourist spot when a local girl claimed to have seen ghostly faces on an old stele.

Feast your eyes on the centuries-old statues of the judges of hell.

A rare public effigy of “the Embracing Kangiten,” the erotic Japanese equivalent of Hindu god Ganesha.

The alleged site of the months-long imprisonment of a Japanese prince.

All that remains of Okinawa's royal temple are a restored gateway and a tall banyan tree.