Bunkyo City · JP

Hoshinji

Hoshinji (ほうせんじ) is a quiet Pure Land Buddhist temple tucked into the university quarter of Hongo, Bunkyo, directly across from the University of Tokyo's famous Akamon, the Red Gate. Small and easy to miss among the campus bustle, it rewards a short detour for its carved images—and, above all, for its intimate link to the beloved Meiji writer Higuchi Ichiyo, who lived next door as a little girl and set scenes from her fiction here. Registered with the Tōku temple Zōjō-ji back in 1596, the temple is as much a piece of Tokyo's literary memory as a place of worship, and a stop of just twenty or thirty minutes fits naturally into an afternoon wandering around Hongo and the university campus.