Amanosan Kongoji Temple

Amanosan Kongoji is a Shingon Buddhist temple complex founded around 800 CE, set deep in a forested mountain landscape near Kawachinagano in southern Osaka prefecture. As the seventh temple of the New Saigoku Pilgrimage Route, it has received Buddhist pilgrims for over a millennium, with the mountain approach itself considered part of the spiritual practice. The Shingon school, traced back to the monk Kūkai, follows an esoteric tantric tradition rare in East Asia, and several of the temple's wooden structures carry designation as Important Cultural Properties of Japan. The compound is enveloped by old-growth forest that transforms into vivid autumn foliage each November.