Best Traditional Shrines & Temples To Visit In Japan
After a bunch of visits to Japan over the years, I’ve put together this Japanese temple & shrine guide to help you find the best ones! There are more than 160,000 traditional Japanese temples and shrines scattered across the ‘Land of the Rising Sun,’ and usually they have a bunch of interesting history behind them, plus the buildings themselves are real works of art. Kyoto is Japan’s ancient capital and cultural center, so it has most of the famous shrines in Japan, as well as many of the best temples to visit in Japan. You can also find some good ones in and around Tokyo city. After a bunch of visits to Japan over the years, I’ve put together this Japanese temple & shrine guide to help you find the best ones! There are more than 160,000 traditional Japanese temples and shrines scattered across the ‘Land of the Rising Sun,’ and usually they have a bunch of interesting history behind them, plus the buildings themselves are real works of art. Kyoto is Japan’s ancient capital and cultural center, so it has most of the famous shrines in Japan, as well as many of the best temples to visit in Japan. You can also find some good ones in and around Tokyo city.
5/8/20241 min read
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Best Traditional Shrines & Temples In Japan
1. Todai-ji Temple (Nara)
Todai-ji Temple is one of Japan’s biggest and most spectacular landmarks.
This massive ancient monument has a lot of cool history behind it. It was the world’s biggest wooden building for a millennium, and it houses the biggest bronze Buddha statue in the world. Even the doors are massive.
We’ve visited Todai-ji a couple of times and it’s a must-see. If you look around the Nara Park, it also has a bunch of other traditional Japanese temples and shrines.
Todai-ji was the biggest wooden building in the world for more than 1,000 years!
Nara was the ancient capital of Japan during the 8th century, and a bunch of important temples were built there.
Some of these, including Todaiji, were built to try to gain divine protection for Japan after a major smallpox epidemic devastated the country and wiped out 1/3rd of its population.
Todaiji took 15 years to build. After being finished in 752 AD, the main building at Todaiji Temple was the biggest wooden building in the world for more than 1,000 years.
It was destroyed by fire and rebuilt twice over the centuries, so even though the current building is huge, the original was actually 30 percent bigger!
The giant Buddha statue inside weighs over 500 tons, and more than 350,000 people were involved in making it. Both the temple and statue have been damaged by earthquakes and fires over the ages, but they’ve been faithfully repaired each time.
Nowadays, Todaiji is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site and it gets more than 2 million visitors per year.