Kawasaki-Daishi川崎大師

Researched for this guide and verified sight by sight — walk times below are measured from this stop.

• Kawasaki Daishi (Heikenji)川崎大師 平間寺

  

  One of three head temples of the Chisan branch of Shingon Buddhism, founded in 1128 around an image of Kobo Daishi that a fisherman is said to have drawn from the sea. The branch line is its doing: Keikyu's first tracks opened in 1899 to carry pilgrims here. Great gate, main hall, Fudo hall and an octagonal five-storey pagoda share one precinct, and most who come are here for yakuyoke, the rite that turns misfortune aside.

  ≈8 min walkDaishi cho, Kawasaki Ward, Kawasaki, Kanagawa PrefectureSee on map →

• Kawasaki Daishi Omotesando and Nakamise-dori川崎大師 表参道・仲見世通り

  

  Two streets rather than one. The Omotesando starts at the station and runs east; the Nakamise — about two hundred metres — is the last stretch, squared up against the temple's main gate, with daruma sellers, kuzumochi makers and candy shops whose knives keep a steady tapping going as they cut. That tapping, heard through the crowd, put the approach on the Environment Agency's 1996 list of a hundred soundscapes worth keeping. Little here is old fabric: the wartime air raids took the prewar street, the merchants' cooperative rebuilt it, and since 2013 the city has reviewed new building along it against a townscape standard.

  ≈11 min walkDaishimachi, Kawasaki ward, Kawasaki, Kanagawa PrefectureSee on map →

• Wakamiya Hachimangu and Kanayama Shrine若宮八幡宮・金山神社

  

  A shrine to Emperor Nintoku — Hachiman's young prince, which is what "Wakamiya" names — raised by settlers who crossed the Tama River to reclaim the river flats at Daishi. Its sub-shrine belongs to two gods of the forge and looks it: black steel plate outside, a bellows, a furnace and a sunken anvil on an earth floor within. Those same gods took charge of the body's lower half, and each April a phallic mikoshi goes out through the streets before a crowd drawn from well beyond Japan.

  ≈5 min walkDaishi Ekimae 2, Kawasaki ward, Kawasaki, Kanagawa PrefectureSee on map →