Byakugō-ji
# Byakugō-ji

Byakugō-ji (白毫寺) is a Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan. A number of wooden statues of the Heian and Kamakura periods have been designated Important Cultural Properties and the temple's five-coloured camellias are a Prefectural Natural Monument.

## Name

The byakugō or urna is the curl of white hair between the eyebrows that is one of the thirty-two physical characteristics of the Buddha.

## Buildings

The five by five bay Hondō, with tiled hipped roof, dates from the early Edo period (first half of the seventeenth century) and has been designated a Municipal Cultural Property. A tahōtō was still standing in the Meiji period.

## Treasures

Byakugō-ji's seven Important Cultural Properties of Japan are, from the Heian period, an Amida Nyorai, and a bodhisattva traditionally identified as Monju Bosatsu and once enshrined in the temple's tahōtō, and from the Kamakura period, Enma-ō, attendants Shiroku (司録) and Shimyō (司命), Taizan-ō (太山王), Jizō Bosatsu, and Kōshō Bosatsu (興正菩薩) (Eison (叡尊). The Taizan-ō was carved by Kōen (康円) in 1259 and has an inscription documenting repairs in 1498.

