Kan'eiji Temple

Kan-eiji is a Tendai Buddhist temple on the Ueno hill in northern Tokyo. It was founded in 1625 by Tenkai, the priest-advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu, modelled on Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei to protect Edo from the inauspicious northern direction. At its peak the temple complex covered the entire area of today's Ueno Park and served as burial ground for six of the fifteen Tokugawa shoguns. During the Boshin War of 1868 imperial troops burnt most of the temple down; today only the Kondo main hall, the old five-storey pagoda and the Kiyomizu Kannon-do remain. Walkers in Ueno Park keep coming across remnants of what was once the largest temple complex of the Edo period.