Chionin Temple

The massive Sanmon Gate defines the entrance to Chion-in, standing twenty-four meters tall and fifty meters wide. As the largest wooden temple gate in Japan, this two-story structure was completed in sixteen nineteen and serves as a formal threshold to the headquarters of the Jodo, or Pure Land, sect of Buddhism. The temple grew from a humble hut where the priest Honen lived and taught in the late twelfth century, eventually flourishing through the support of the Tokugawa shogunate.