Rokudō Chinnō-ji Temple

In front of you is the gate of Rokudō Chinnō-ji, and beside it a stone that tells you where you are: at “the crossroads of the six paths”, the six realms in which, according to Buddhism, a being can be reborn.

1At the cemetery gates

The name is no accident. From here the road climbed to Toribeno, the great cremation and burial ground of the old capital. Funeral processions passed along this street, and the spot came to be seen as the border between the world of the living and that of the dead. The temple’s origins are disputed: a document from the year 1002 links it to a foundation in 836, while other traditions credit monks from Nara or Kūkai himself.

2The official from hell

This is where the temple’s most famous legend begins. Ono no Takamura, a ninth-century poet and senior official with a brilliant and difficult temperament, served the emperor by day. According to tradition, at night he went down to hell through a well in the temple garden to help Enma, the judge of the dead. In 2011 another old well turned up on neighbouring land, and tradition identifies it as his way back.

In the Enma hall there is a statue of the king of hell that tradition attributes to Takamura himself, with a statue of Takamura beside it.

Every year, from 7 to 10 August, just before Obon, Kyoto families come to ring the “welcoming bell”, which calls the spirits of the ancestors home. You cannot see the bell: it is rung by pulling a rope that comes out through a hole in the wall.

3What to look for

• The Rokudō no tsuji stone, next to the gate.
• The bell rope, poking out of the belfry wall.
• The Enma hall, with its wooden lattice.