Byakugō-ji

Byakugō-ji (白毫寺) is a Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan. A number of wooden statues of the Heian and Kamakura periods have been designated Important Cultural Properties and the temple's five-coloured camellias are a Prefectural Natural Monument.

Name
The byakugō or urna is the curl of white hair between the eyebrows that is one of the thirty-two physical characteristics of the Buddha.

Buildings
The five by five bay Hondō, with tiled hipped roof, dates from the early Edo period (first half of the seventeenth century) and has been designated a Municipal Cultural Property. A tahōtō was still standing in the Meiji period.

Treasures
Byakugō-ji's seven Important Cultural Properties of Japan are, from the Heian period, an Amida Nyorai, and a bodhisattva traditionally identified as Monju Bosatsu and once enshrined in the temple's tahōtō, and from the Kamakura period, Enma-ō, attendants Shiroku (司録) and Shimyō (司命), Taizan-ō (太山王), Jizō Bosatsu, and Kōshō Bosatsu (興正菩薩) (Eison (叡尊). The Taizan-ō was carved by Kōen (康円) in 1259 and has an inscription documenting repairs in 1498.