・Honkyoji, the largest Nichiren Sect temple in the City of Omura, is the family temple of the Omura Clan, who served as lords of the Omura Domain.
・Once Christianity was banned in the early Edo Period, Omura Yoshiaki, the first lord of the Omura Domain, gave up his faith in Christianity quickly and returned to being a believer in the Nichiren Sect of Buddhism.
・As proof of his returning as a Nichiren Sect follower, Yoshiaki erected Honkyoji Temple.
・According to village records, the temple was built in 1602. Considering that Christianity saw its glory days within the domain in those days, however, it seems unlikely that the temple was reconstructed then. It is thought that the construction of the temple started after 1605, when Omura Yoshiaki renounced his faith in Christianity, and was completed in around 1608.
・As the head temple of the Nichiren Sect in the Omura Domain, Honkyoji Temple has eight branch temples in the domain.
・Nichiren Sect followers accounted for about 40%, or about 45,000 people, of the entire population of the Omura Domain, with Honkyoji Temple serving as the core.
・In the temple precincts, there are many tombstones of the lords of the Omura Domain.
・Due to a fire in 1778, the main hall of the temple was reconstructed in 1787. Now that about 200 years have passed, the temple’s main hall is a valuable asset for the City of Omura as a structure built during the Edo Period.
・In the graveyard for the Omura Clan, there are graves for the lords of the Omura Domain, their wives, and other family members. Those graves vary in form, such as a five-ring pagoda, a kasatoba (a stone tablet with a stone hat), a stone-made mausoleum, a hoto (a pagoda featuring a cylindrical body and a roof over it), and a square tower, all of which are very valuable constructions in terms of stonework.
・The graves of some lords are more than six meters in size. It is said that they were designed to make it known that the Omura Clan renounced their faith in Christianity and became Buddhists.