Rakuhō-ji is a Shingon Buzan-ha temple in Motoki, Sakuragawa, Ibaraki, the twenty-fourth station of the Bandō 33 Kannon Pilgrimage, popularly known as Amabiki Kannon. Tradition holds that in 587, during the reign of Emperor Yōmei, the lay practitioner Hōrin Dokuju, who had come from the Chinese state of Liang, sought a sacred site here and enshrined a Kannon image he had brought, founding the temp…

Tradition holds that in 587, during the reign of Emperor Yōmei, the lay practitioner Hōrin Dokuju, who had come from the Chinese state of Liang, sought a sacred site here and enshrined a Kannon image he had brought, founding the temple. In the Jōwa era of the Heian period (834-848), Kōbō Daishi (Kūk…