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Places of worship for Japanese Buddhists

Buddhist temples or monasteries are (along with Shinto shrines) the most numerous, famous, and important religious buildings in Japan. The shogunates or leaders of Japan have made it a priority to update and rebuild Buddhist temples since the Momoyama period (late 16th century). The Japanese word for a Buddhist monastery is tera (寺) (kun reading), and the same kanji also has the pronunciation ji (on reading), so temple names frequently end in dera or ji. Another ending, in (院), is normally used to refer to minor temples. Examples of temple names that have these suffixes are Kiyomizu dera, Enryaku ji and Kōtoku in.

The Japanese word for a Buddhist temple, tera (寺), was anciently also written phonetically 天良, tera, and is cognate with the Modern Korean Chǒl from Middle Korean Tiel, the Jurchen Taira and the reconstructed Old Chinese *dɘiaʁ, all meaning "Buddhist monastery".

In Japan, Buddhist temples co exist with Shinto shrines and both share the basic features of Japanese traditional architecture. Similarities between temples and shrines are also functional. Like a shrine, a Buddhist temple is not primarily a place of worship: its most important buildings are used for the safekeeping of sacred objects (the honzon, equivalent to a shrine's shintai) and are not accessible to worshipers. It is normal for a temple to have been also a shrine, and obvious architectural differences between the two are few, such that often only a specialist will notice them. Many visitors to Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines go for similar reasons, such as prayer and for luck. The two religions coexist due to increased popularity of religions and the birth of new religions. Shrines enshrining local kami existed long before the arrival of Buddhism, but they consisted either of demarcated land areas with no building, or of temporary shrines, erected when needed. With the arrival of Buddhism in Japan in the 6th century, shrines were subjected to its influence and adopted both the concept of permanent structures and the architecture of Buddhist temples. It became normal for shrines to be accompanied by temples in mixed complexes called jingū ji (神宮寺) or miyadera (宮寺). The opposite was also common: most temples had at least a small shrine dedicated to its tutelary kami and were therefore called jisha (寺社). The Meiji era eliminated most jingūji, but left jisha intact, such that even today most temples have at least one shrine, sometimes very large, on their premises, and the Buddhist goddess Benzaiten is often worshiped at Shinto shrines. As a consequence, for centuries shrines and temples had a symbiotic relationship where each influenced the other. Shrines took from Buddhism its gates (mon), the use of a hall for lay worshipers, the use of vermilion colored wood and more, while Chinese Buddhist architecture was adapted to Japanese tastes with more asymmetrical layouts, greater use of natural materials, and an adaptation of the monastery to the pre existing natural environment. The clear separation between Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, which today is the norm, emerges only as a result of the shinbutsu bunri ("separation of kami and Buddhas") law of 1868. This separation was mandated by law, and many shrine temples were forced to become just shrines, among them famous ones like Usa Hachiman gū and Tsurugaoka Hachiman gū. Because mixing the two religions was now forbidden, jingūji had to give away some of their properties or dismantle some of their buildings, thus damaging the integrity of their cultural heritage and decreasing the historical and economic value of their properties. For example, Tsurugaoka Hachiman gū's giant Niō (the two wooden wardens usually found at the sides of a temple's entrance), being objects of Buddhist worship and therefore illegal where they were, were sold to Jufuku ji, where they still are. The shrine temple also had to destroy Buddhism related buildings, for example its tahōtō, its midō and its shichidō garan. Partly due also to the variety of climates in Japan and the millennium encompassed between the first cultural import and the last, the result is extremely heterogeneous, but several practically universal features can be found nonetheless. First of all is the choice of materials, always wood in various forms (planks, straw, tree bark, etc.) for almost all structures. Unlike both Western and some Chinese architecture, the use of stone is avoided except for certain specific uses, for example temple podia and pagoda foundations.

There are four great temples of the seventh century: Asukadera, Kudara Odera, Kawaradera and Yakushiji.

This great hall had three golden halls and was the first full scale temple. It was the most significant temple in the Asuka period. Zenshūyō – A style that takes its name from its creators, the Buddhist Zen sect, and which emerged in the late 12th or early 13th century on the basis of contemporary Chinese architecture. The zenshūyō was originally called karayō (唐様) but, like the Daibutsu style, was renamed by Ōta Hirotarō, a 20th century scholar. Its characteristics are earthen floors, decorative curved pent roofs (mokoshi) and pronouncedly curved main roofs, cusped windows (katōmado) and paneled doors. Typical of the style is also the main hall (Butsuden), which has just one story but seems to have two because it has a covered pent roof called mokoshi. Setchūyō – an architectural style born in Japan during the Muromachi period from the fusion of elements from three preceding styles, the wayō, the daibutsuyō and zen'yō. It is exemplified by the main hall at Kakurin ji. The combination of wayō and daibutsuyō in particular became so frequent that sometimes it is classed separately by scholars under the name Shin wayō (新和様). The temple and the city were built with Feng Shui in mind. Each direction was protected by a god: Genbu guarded the north, Seiryū the east, Byakko the west and Suzaku the south. "a garan is a temple with a kon dō (main hall), a tō (pagoda), a kō dō (lecture hall), a shōrō (belfry), a jiki dō (refectory), a sōbō (monks' living quarters), and a kyōzō (scriptures deposit, library)." These are the seven listed as shichidō elements of a Buddhism in Japan#Nara Buddhism (710–794) (Nanto Rokushū) temple. A 15th century text describes how Zen school temples (Sōtō (曹洞), Rinzai (臨済)) included a butsuden or butsu dō (main hall), a hattō (lecture hall), a kuin (kitchen/office), a sō dō (building dedicated to Zazen), a sanmon (main gate), a tōsu (toilet) and a yokushitsu (bath).

Butsuden or Butsu dō (仏殿・仏堂) – lit. "Hall of Buddha". A Zen temple's main hall. Seems to have two stories, but has in fact only one and measures either 3×3 or 5×5 bays. Any building enshrining the statue of Buddha or of a bodhisattva and dedicated to prayer. sai dō (斎堂) – the refectory at a Zen temple or monastery. Yakushi dō (薬師堂) – a building that enshrines a statue of Yakushi Nyorai.

Even though they may be located at the bottom of a valley, temples are metaphorically called mountains and even the numbers used to count them carry the ending san or zan (山), hence the name sangō. This tradition goes back to the times when temples were primarily monasteries purposely built in remote mountainous areas. The founding of a temple is called kaisan (開山) for this reason. No fixed rules for its formation exist, but the sangō is basically topographical in origin, as in Hieizan Enryaku ji: these two names together mean "Mount Hiei's Enryaku ji". For this reason it is sometimes used as a personal name, particularly in Zen. There may be however some other semantic relationship between the sangō and the san'in jigō, as for example in the case of Rurikōzan Yakushi ji. The sangō and the jigō are simply different names of the same god. Sometimes the sangō and the jigō are both posthumous names, for example of the founder's mother and father.

The character in (院), which gives the ingō its name, originally indicated an enclosure or section and therefore, by analogy, it later came to mean a cloister in a monastery. It is in this sense which it is applied to temples or, more often, subtemples. It can be also found in the name of formerly minor temples risen by chance to great prominence. For example, Kawagoe's Kita in used to be one of three subtemples of a temple which no longer exist. Less frequent in an ingō are an (庵) and bō (坊). Dō (architecture) (dō) is normally used in the name of particular buildings of a temple's compound, e. g. Kannon dō, but can be employed as a name of minor or small temples.

The only name in common use is however the jigō, (ending in (〜寺)) which can then be considered the main one. The sangō and ingō are not, and never were, in common use. The character ji it contains is sometimes pronounced tera or dera as in Kiyomizu dera, normally when the rest of the name is an indigenous name (kun'yomi).

Temples are sometimes known by an unofficial but popular name. This is usually topographical in origin, as for example in the case of Asakusa's Sensō ji, also known as Asakusa dera. A temple can also be named after a special or famous characteristic, as for example in the case Kyoto's Saihō ji, commonly called Koke dera, or "moss temple" because of its famous moss garden. Unofficial names can have various other origins.