Daigan-ji

This guide to Daigan-ji in Hiroshima traces the eight centuries during which its monks, holding the title fushin bugyo, served as construction magistrates for nearby Itsukushima Shrine, sharing a single goddess, Benzaiten, protector of sailors and merchants, between temple and shrine. It follows the 1868 Meiji government order that legally split every Shinto shrine from its Buddhist temple, and what that law meant for a goddess who could no longer be housed inside the shrine she had occupied since the Kamakura era. You will hear how workers responded and where her worship was carried afterward, on the same ground the temple had tended for centuries.