Hōgon-ji (Matsuyama)

Hōgon-ji
Former Hōgon-ji main hall, 2011
Basic information
Location	5-4 Dogo Yuzukicho, Matsuyama, 790-0837, Japan
Affiliation	Ji-shū
Deity	Amida Buddha
Country	Japan
Completed	668

Coordinates: 33°51′6.2″N 132°47′23.1″E / 33.851722°N 132.789750°E / 33.851722; 132.789750

Hōgon-ji (宝厳寺) is a Buddhist temple of the Ji sect in Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan. It is famed as the birthplace of the Buddhist sage Ippen, who founded the Ji (time) sect as an offshoot of the Jōdo (Pure Land Buddhism) sect in 1276.

According to temple records, the temple was founded in 668 by an ancestor of the Kōno clan at the behest of the abdicated Empress Saimei.

Ippen was born at the temple in what was then Iyo province in 1239. As a child he was known as Shōjomaru. In the year 1248, his mother died, and he became a monk with the name Zuien. In 1251 he left Iyo to study under Shōdatsu in Dazaifu. He returned to Iyo in 1263 at the time of his father's death, and married. In 1271, he vowed to give up his domestic life. On a visit to Kumano Shrine in 1274, Ippen experienced a revelation and "spent the remaining sixteen years of his life in constant travel throughout Japan." "The term ippen 一遍 is a common word meaning 'once,' but its second element (-pen, hen) also has the meaning of 'everywhere' or 'all pervading.'"

In 1292, three years after Ippen's death, Hōgon-ji was rededicated as a temple of the Ji sect.