Tsukiji Honganji: Tokyo's Most Architecturally Surprising Temple

Ito Chuta was born in 1867 and studied architecture at Tokyo Imperial University, where he later became a professor and chair of the department. Most of his contemporaries never asked the question that ran through his career: if you follow Japanese Buddhism back to where it started, what should its buildings look like?

In the Meiji and Taisho periods, Japanese temples almost all followed Chinese Tang Dynasty models, with curved eaves, bracketed timber, and long sweeping roofs. That model came over with the religion in the sixth century and had been the default ever since. Ito thought this was lazy history. Buddhism began in India and its first great monuments were Indian, so a builder who cared about authenticity should look to Bodh Gaya, not a Tang pavilion.

He went to see for himself. Ito spent years traveling through India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Central Asia, documenting old Buddhist structures and sketching the carved railings at Sanchi, the tower temples of Angkor, and the rock-cut viharas of Maharashtra. When the commission for a new Tsukiji Honganji came after the 1923 earthquake, few Japanese architects alive knew early Buddhist architecture as directly as he did.

The commission came from Otani Kozui, head of the Nishi Honganji sect, who shared Ito's interest in how Buddhism had spread along the Silk Road. The two of them meant the temple to make Ito's argument in stone.

Construction ran from 1931 to 1934. The finished building draws on India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Turkey, and the way the ornament is composed has echoes of European Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Some of it is just Ito. He loved the supernatural creatures of Japanese yokai tradition, and the animal reliefs on the outside are odder than any strict historical program would call for.

You meet the building from Harumi-dori: a symmetrical stone front with a raised center, a pillared arcade, and a wide staircase up from the street. It's bigger than it looks in photos. The temple sits on a large corner plot and you can see it from several directions.

Carved figures cover it. Elephants hold the lower levels, standing for strength and recalling the white elephant in the story of the Buddha's birth. Peacocks run along the roofline; in Buddhist iconography they can eat poison without harm, a metaphor for turning suffering into something else. Lions, the usual guardians in South and Southeast Asian temples, frame the main entrances. Lotus flowers fill the gaps between them. The lotus comes up clean out of muddy water, and every Buddhist tradition uses it for enlightenment.

Ito based the curve of the dome over the central hall on the leaf of the Bodhi tree, the tree the historical Buddha sat under when he reached enlightenment. The main gate faces west on purpose, toward Nishi Honganji in Kyoto and, past that, India.

Inside, incense is the first thing you notice, and the street noise drops away as soon as you're through the door.

Above the entrance, the stained glass windows carry lotus designs, a Buddhist motif in a Western medium, and it looks deliberate.

On the main altar stands a gilded Amida Nyorai (Amitābha Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light and Infinite Life), the central figure of Jodo Shinshu practice. The altar itself is conventional Japanese Buddhist work in gold leaf and lacquer, which makes the room around it look even stranger. The pews facing it are rows of straight-backed wooden chairs instead of tatami or cushions. Ito designed the interior as carefully as the outside, and he meant the traditions to sit side by side without blending.

Walk up toward the altar, turn around, and there it is: a full pipe organ against the back wall, facing the Buddha. Nobody expects it in a Japanese temple, and it's the first thing most visitors ask our guides about.

The organ was donated about forty years ago to help popularize Buddhist music. Walcker, a well-known organ builder in what was then West Germany, made it, and it has around 2,000 pipes.

Even the layout of those pipes is doctrinal. On each side, they rise in six clusters, one for each of the six characters of the nembutsu, 南無阿弥陀仏 (namu amida butsu). Chanting the nembutsu, calling on the name of Amida Buddha, is how Jodo Shinshu followers express their faith and receive Amida's compassion, and the organ is built around it. In the middle of each side, 48 pipes stand for the 48 Vows of Amida Buddha, his promises to save all sentient beings.

It's a working instrument, too, used in ceremonies. Buddhist weddings have been held here with it, and it accompanies chanting at some services. On the last Friday of each month there's a free lunchtime concert from 12:20 to 12:50, and it draws a regular crowd. The program runs from classical Western pieces to music tied to the temple, including X Japan's "Forever Love," because the funeral of the band's guitarist hide, who died in 1998, was held in this hall.

This is a major temple, a branch of Nishi Honganji in Kyoto, which heads the Jodo Shinshu Honganji-ha denomination. Jodo Shinshu is one of the largest Buddhist sects in Japan, founded by the monk Shinran (1173 to 1263), and in its early days it was radical. Shinran taught that salvation through Amida Buddha was open to everyone, monks and aristocrats or not, and that ordinary people living ordinary lives could reach enlightenment. He married, had children, and ate meat, all on purpose, as a rejection of the closed monastic ideal. The sect spread fast because it didn't ask followers to give up the world.

Tsukiji Honganji was built as the largest Nenbutsu-dojo in the Kanto region, a center for Buddhist practice and outreach in eastern Japan, and its size reflects that. The main hall is the flagship of a living religion, with daily services. Visitors can attend as long as they're respectful.

Tsukijishijo Station (Toei Oedo Line): Exit A1, 2 minute walk
Tsukiji Station (Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line): 5 minute walk
Higashi-Ginza Station (Toei Asakusa/Tokyo Metro Hibiya Lines): 7 minute walk

The temple fronts the main street, Harumi-dori, directly across from the Tsukiji Outer Market. You can spot the dome from several blocks away.

Those evening hours are unusual. Most sacred sites in Tokyo are shut by dinner, and Tsukiji Honganji is still open after it.

The temple café, Tsumugi, is in the Information Center building to the left of the main hall. That building used to be a cluttered institutional office until new temple leadership arrived in 2015 and converted it, part of a wider set of changes that has made Tsukiji Honganji one of the friendlier religious sites in Tokyo for visitors.

People come for the 18-dish breakfast: a bowl of okayu (rice porridge) with 16 small dishes alongside, including pickles, vegetables, small fish, and tofu. It's set up to be eaten slowly. Breakfast runs 8:00 to 10:30 AM and you can book that window online. It's busy every day. Queues form before opening and some people turn up at 5 AM, so if you haven't booked, come early.

A window table with the main hall in view and that breakfast in front of you beats most Tokyo café mornings. Lunch, Japanese tea, wagashi sweets, and alcohol are served through the rest of the day.

Pair it with Tsukiji Outer Market, right across the street. You can eat breakfast at the Outer Market (fresh seafood, tamagoyaki, grilled things from the stalls) and then see the temple before it gets busy. Or eat at Café Tsumugi first and cross over when the market is at its morning peak.

Tsukiji + Ginza: The outer market, the temple, then a 10-minute walk to Ginza for shopping and a department store lunch. It makes a tidy central Tokyo morning.

If you'd like a guide to explain Tsukiji Honganji in the context of Japanese Buddhist history and the architecture debate Ito was part of, Tokyo Essentials covers the cultural core of central Tokyo. For a custom itinerary, there's Infinite Tokyo.

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Is there an entry fee for Tsukiji Honganji?

No. The main hall and grounds are free. The small museum in the compound costs ¥500. You pay as you go at the café and bookstore. The monthly organ concerts are free too.

Do I need to make a reservation for the Café Tsumugi breakfast?

We'd book. The 8:00–10:30 AM breakfast fills fast, and without a reservation you may be queuing well before opening. You can reserve through the official temple website.

When are the pipe organ concerts held?

On the last Friday of each month, at lunchtime, from about 12:20 to 12:50. They're free and you don't need to book, but the hall fills, so get there a little early.

How is Tsukiji Honganji different from other Tokyo temples?

Most Tokyo temples, such as Senso-ji in Asakusa, Zojo-ji in Shiba, and Gotoku-ji in Setagaya, are timber buildings in the Chinese-influenced style Japanese Buddhism adopted in the sixth century. Tsukiji Honganji is reinforced concrete built in the form of an ancient Indian Buddhist temple. Its architect argued that going back to Indian forms was more historically authentic than carrying on with Chinese ones. It's the only building in Tokyo that looks like it belongs in Bodh Gaya or Angkor instead of Kyoto, and the only Buddhist temple in Tokyo with a working pipe organ.