Huguo Chan Buddhist Temple

TAIWAN, Taipei

In 1899 Japanese Governor General Kodama Gentaro asked a visiting monk, Genshu Umeyama from the Rinzai school, to establish the temple. By 1912, the Great Hero Hall and the bell tower gate had been built. Nagatani Jien took over the abbotship and established the Zhennan school. Only the bell tower gate and the Great Hero Hall retain their original appearance due to several temple reconstructions. It was listed as a Municipal Cultural Heritage Site in 1998.
The temple consists of the bell tower gate, Great Hero Hall, Amitabha Hall and sutra repository. The two-story bell tower gate has a single-eave hip-and-gable black tiled roof. The upper story is surrounded by a balcony, while the lower story resembles a fortress with a doorway in the center, flanked by the compound walls. Although it is a bell tower, it has the appearance and function of a main temple gate.
The Great Hero Hall is the largest extant Japanese wooden structure in Taiwan. It used to face south, but was realigned to face west in 1984 to accommodate street widening. The hall has a double-eave hip-and-gable roof with extended eaves. The tile caps on the roof ridge are engraved with the character “zhen” (protection). The hall houses a statue of Sakyamuni Buddha with Ksitigarbha and Avalokitesvara Bodhisattvas on either side. Below the eaves on the right hand side there hangs a copper bell cast in 1910.