Bitchū Kokubun-ji Temple
Sōja-shi, Japan
The Bitchū Kokubun-ji is an Omuro-branch Shingon Buddhist temple located in what is now the Kamibayashi neighborhood of the city of Sōja, Japan. Its main image is a statue of Yakushi Nyorai. It claims to be the successor to one of the provincial temples per the system established by Emperor Shōmu during the Nara period (710 – 794) for the purpose of promoting Buddhism as the national religion of Japan and standardising imperial rule over the provinces. The ruins of the original Bitchū Kokubun-ji were designated as a National Historic Site in 1968, but the ruins of the associated provincial nunnery, the Bitchū Kokubun-niji were actually designated earlier, in 1922.
Monastery data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).