Honkoji Temple | Japan Highlights Travel, for sightseeing around Tokaido

It is said that Honkoji Temple was established by Tadasada, the founder of the powerful Fukozu-Matsudaira clan in the first half of the 16th century. It has been protected throughout the years as the clan's bodaiji—the temple to which a family' dead are entrusted generation after generation. Unusually, even after the clan left Fukozu for Shimabara Domain (in modern-day Saga Prefecture) and elsewhere, the remains of successive heads of the family continued to be laid to rest at Honkoji. It is also known as "Mikawa's temple of hydrangeas" (Mikawa Province being modern-day eastern Aichi Prefecture), and every year in June the temple grounds are buried in around 10,000 hydrangea bushes of many varieties. Hydrangeas in the rainy season, autumn foliage in the fall—the historied temple is also a great place to experience the beauty of the seasons.