Soji-ji

Sōji-ji
Sanshokaku, the visitors' center
Basic information
Location	1-1, Tsurumi 2-chome, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
Affiliation	Sōtō Zen Buddhism
Country	Japan
Website	http://sojiji.jp/
Architectural description
Founder	Keizan
Completed	740, rebuilt 1911

Sōji-ji (總持寺^?) is one of two daihonzan (大本山^?, "head temples") of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism. The other is Eihei-ji temple in Fukui Prefecture. Fodor's calls it "one of the largest and busiest Buddhist institutions in Japan". The temple was founded in 740 as a Shingon Buddhist temple. Keizan, later known as Sōtō's great patriarch Taiso Jōsai Daishi, founded the present temple in 1321, when he renamed it Sōji-ji with the help and patronage of Emperor Go-Daigo. The temple has about twelve buildings in Tsurumi, part of the port city of Yokohama, one designed by the architect Itō Chūta.

Giving it the name Morooka-dera (諸岳寺^?) circa 740, Gyōki (668-749) founded the temple as a Shingon Buddhist temple in Noto, a peninsula on Honshu, Japan's largest island. At that time, the temple was a small chapel within the precincts of a larger Shinto shrine called Morooka Hiko Jinja. By 1296, the temple had grown enough to support a full-time priest and a master ajari named Jōken was assigned there.