About Hawaii Shingon Mission

Hawaii Shingon Mission or Shingon Shu Hawaii located at 915 Sheridan Street in Honolulu, Hawaii, is one of the most elaborate displays of Japanese Buddhist temple architecture in Hawaiʻi. It was first built in 1915-1918 by Nakagawa Katsutaro, a master builder of Japanese-style temples, then renovated in 1929 by Hego Fuchino, a self-taught man who was the first person of Japanese ancestry to become a licensed architect in the Islands. The building underwent further changes in 1978, and was considerably augmented in 1992. However, its most distinctive features remain: the steep, hipped-gable roof (irimoya) with rounded-gable projection, both with elaborate carvings on the ends, and the glittering altar and interior furnishings from Japan that signify its ties to esoteric Shingon Buddhism.
Hawaii Shingon Mission or Shingon Shu Hawaii located at 915 Sheridan Street in Honolulu, Hawaii, is one of the most elaborate displays of Japanese Buddhist temple architecture in Hawaiʻi. It was first built in 1915-1918 by Nakagawa Katsutaro, a master builder of Japanese-style temples, then renovated in 1929 by Hego Fuchino, a self-taught man who was the first person of Japanese ancestry to become a licensed architect in the Islands. The building underwent further changes in 1978, and was considerably augmented in 1992. However, its most distinctive features remain: the steep, hipped-gable roof (irimoya) with rounded-gable projection, both with elaborate carvings on the ends, and the glittering altar and interior furnishings from Japan that signify its ties to esoteric Shingon Buddhism.
Garbhadhatu (Sanskrit) or Taizo-kai (jp.) - Mandala

Shingon Buddhism – The Japanese root of Esoteric Buddhism

Shingon Buddhism is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asia, originally spread from India to China through traveling monks such as and . Known in Chinese as the Tangmi these esoteric teachings would later flourish in Japan under the auspices of a Buddhist monk named (空海), who traveled to Tang China to acquire and request transmission of the esoteric teachings. .