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Chion-in’s Great Bell: New Year’s Eve Icon, Ancient Memorial Rite
Chion-in’s 70-ton great bell rings only a handful of times a year — at the Gyoki memorial in April a…
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The Bell from the Dragon Palace: Enshoji’s Sunken Bell Legend
In 1822, a fisherman off Yokosuka pulled up a small bronze bell sealed with cypress planks — inside …
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The Temple Bell That Art Exploded Into: Taro Okamoto’s Kanki no Kane at Kyūkokuji
A Buddhist temple bell in a Nagoya backstreet — made by Taro Okamoto in 1965, five years before the …
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The Bell That Crossed the World: Honsen-ji and Its Traveling Tokugawa Bronze
Honsen-ji in Shinagawa, Tokyo, houses a rare 1657 Tokugawa bronze bell that traveled to the Paris an…
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Tofukuji’s Midnight Bell — An 800-Year Nightly Tradition in Kyoto
Tofukuji Temple in Kyoto rings its “farewell bell” every night at 11:45 PM — a tradition unbroken fo…
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The Bell That No Longer Speaks
A bell cast in 1140 to consecrate one of Japan’s greatest mountain sanctuaries outlasted the temple …
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The Bell That Outlasted an Empire
A bell cast in 1614 to consecrate the grandest Buddhist hall in Japan ended up triggering the destru…
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The Bell That Must Never Be Rung — A Curse from the Heian Era
A bell so cursed it has hung in silence for eight centuries. The haunted bronze bell of Hoon-ji Temp…
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Where the Bell and Conch Have Sounded Together at Noon for a Thousand Years
At Hasedera in Nara, a bell cast in 1501 rings alongside a conch-shell horn every day at noon — a ri…
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Where the Living Ring a Bell to Call Back the Dead
Step into Rokudou Chinno-ji in Kyoto’s mysterious Rokudo district — where a legendary courtier commu…
