AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Chōsen-ji (長専寺) is a small Pure Land (Jōdo-shū) Buddhist temple in the town of Mizumaki, set on the northern-Kyūshū plain between Kitakyūshū and Fukuoka city. Though modest and rooted in everyday devotional life, it has earned a quiet reputation far beyond its neighborhood for one unusual practice: okotsu-butsu, 'bone Buddhas'—little sacred images created and enshrined to hold the cremated remains of the departed.↗↗
The temple is far from a museum showpiece, and a visit is best understood as a glimpse of living Japanese faith rather than a list of sights. Its grounds pair a striking funerary custom with a genuinely old pedigree—tradition ties it to the wandering holy man Nenyo Shōnin—and an atmospheric shrine to a 'Mirror Kannon' linked to a famous Noh play. For the culturally curious traveler passing through Fukuoka's Onga district, it offers something intimate and uncommon.↗
A Pure Land temple with old roots
Chōsen-ji belongs to the Jōdo-shū (Pure Land) school, a denomination devoted to Amida Buddha and the hope of rebirth in his Western Paradise. According to the town's own historical records, the temple's origins reach back to the Eiroku era (roughly 1558–1569) and to the ambitions of the itinerant monk Nenyo Shōnin, who is said to have aspired to establish forty-eight temples—Chōsen-ji among them. Its principal image is a standing statue of Amida Nyorai.
