The temple claims to have been founded in the Hakuchi era of the Nara period as a Tendai sect temple to protect the Kiyomi-seki (清見関), a natural barrier on the ancient Tōkaidō highway connecting the capital with eastern Japan, where the path of the road was a narrow ledge between cliffs and the Pacific Ocean. The temple subsequently fell into disrepair and was revived and converted to the Rinzai school by the monk Enni in 1262 AD. The temple flourished during the Muromachi period and was named one of the Jissetsu temples in 1343. It is where Ashikaga Takauji and Imagawa Yoshimoto took the tonsure. In the Sengoku period, when the young Tokugawa Ieyasu was held hostage in Sunpu by the Imagawa clan, he was sent to Seiken-ji to be tutored by the abbot Sessai Chōrō. During the invasion of Suruga Province by the Takeda clan, Imagawa Ujizane established his headquarters at this temple.
The temple was also the location of an important conference held by the leadership of the fledgling Imperial Japanese Navy in June 1887, with the participants discussing various tactics and fleet maneuvers, which would then be tested in practice by the fleet in nearby Shimizu harbor.[3]
Cultural properties
National Important Cultural Properties
Diary of Ye Mengde
Diary of Ye Mengde (Chinese: 葉夢得; Wade–Giles: Yeh Meng-te; 1077–1148), a Song dynasty Chinese scholar, poet, and government minister, dated summer of 1149 AD[4]
National Place of Scenic Beauty
Seiken-ji gardens
The Japanese garden at Seiken-ji dates from the early Edo period and contains ponds and tree arrangements. It became a nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty in 1936.[5]
^ abIsomura, Yukio; Sakai, Hideya (2012). (国指定史跡事典) National Historic Site Encyclopedia. 学生社. ISBN978-4311750403.(in Japanese)
^Evans, David C; Peatty, Mark (2012). Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. Naval Institute Press. pp. 35–36. ISBN978-1591142447.
