Tokei-ji Temple

Tokei-ji stands a few minutes' walk from Kita-Kamakura Station, right next to Engaku-ji. It belongs to the Engaku-ji school of Rinzai Zen, its mountain name is Shokaku-zan, and its principal image is Shaka Nyorai. The main hall and study hall sit in quiet grounds tucked against the hills, where flowers bloom in every season.

According to temple tradition, the founder was Hojo Sadatoki and the first abbess was Kakuzan-ni, the wife of the regent Hojo Tokimune, who became a nun with her husband in 1284 and founded the temple the following year. The old documents that record this tradition, however, date from the Edo period. In the Muromachi and Sengoku periods, daughters of the Kanto and Koga kubo served as abbesses, making it a nunnery of high rank. Tenshu-ni, a daughter of Toyotomi Hideyori adopted by Princess Sen, became its 20th abbess.

The temple is best known as an "engiri-dera," or divorce temple. Together with Mantoku-ji in Gunma Prefecture, it was recognized even by the shogunate's commissioners of temples and shrines. A woman who fled her husband was sheltered here for a set period, counted as three years but in practice 24 months, during which the divorce was settled; most cases ended in an agreement with the husband. The system lasted until 1871. The temple lost its lands in the Meiji Restoration, the last abbess died in 1902, and the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 brought down many buildings. The present main hall and study hall were rebuilt afterward.

Tokei-ji is also a temple of flowers: plum blossoms followed by cherry blossoms in spring, irises and hydrangeas in early summer, and cosmos, gentians and autumn leaves in fall. The Matsugaoka Treasure Hall, built in 1978, houses cultural treasures including the Important Cultural Property wooden standing Sho-Kannon. The Suigetsu Kannon statue can be viewed on the 18th of each month. The graves of figures such as the philosophers Nishida Kitaro and Suzuki Daisetsu and the critic Kobayashi Hideo are in the cemetery. In 2016 the temple was recognized as a Japan Heritage constituent.

Visiting hours are 9:00 to 16:00. Since June 7, 2022, photography of any kind, including with smartphones, has been prohibited throughout the grounds. Allow 30 minutes to an hour. Engaku-ji (about 300 m), Kencho-ji (about 1 km) and Tsurugaoka Hachimangu (about 1.4 km) are all close, so it fits well into a walk from Kita-Kamakura into Kamakura.