Bitchu Kokubunji

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Bitchu Kokubunjifive-storey pagodaKibijimilk vetchSoja

Photo: hajime / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) · original

Ask where to send a first-time visitor for a temple or shrine in Okayama, and Bitchu Kokubunji comes up more than once.

The five-storey pagoda at Bitchu Kokubunji is the only one in Okayama Prefecture and the fixed point of the Kibiji landscape — a wooden tower standing alone above flat farmland with low hills behind it, visible from a long way in every direction. It was completed in the 1840s, is an Important Cultural Property, and stands on the site of one of the provincial temples Emperor Shomu ordered built across Japan in the eighth century.

What makes it more than a pagoda is the field it stands in. From late April into early May the paddies around it are under Chinese milk vetch, planted as green manure, and the tower rises out of a solid pink-purple sheet. In autumn the same fields are cosmos. The Kibiji cycling road runs past the gate, which is how most Japanese visitors arrive.

Visiting essentials

Best time to visit

Late April–early May for Chinese milk vetch around the pagoda | October for cosmos

Hours

Grounds open at all hours | Tourist information office 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM

Closed: Open year-round

Admission

Free | Free municipal parking

Time to allow

45 minutes – 1 hour

Finding your way there

Directions

Kambayashi 1046, Soja City, in the Kibiji Furusato Fudoki-no-Oka area. By car from Soja Station, or by bicycle along the Kibiji cycling road from Kibitsu. Grounds free and open at all hours. Free municipal parking for about 200 cars and 15 coaches, which fills during the milk vetch festival in late April and during evening illuminations.

What locals know

**Late April to early May for the milk vetch.** The fields around the pagoda go solid pink-purple and a festival is held on 29 April. This is the two-week window the whole site is photographed in. **Cosmos in October, canola in spring.** The surrounding fields are planted in rotation and something is usually in flower. Ring the information office rather than guessing. **Come by bicycle.** The Kibiji cycling road is flat, runs from Kibitsu Shrine past burial mounds to here, and rental is available at both ends. It is the intended way to see this landscape. **Evening illumination fills the car park.** The pagoda is lit on selected evenings and the north car park by the Kibiji Motenashi-no-Yakata is the one with space left. **Tsukuriyama Kofun is nearby.** The fourth-largest keyhole burial mound in Japan is a few minutes away and you can walk up it, which is not true of the larger ones in Osaka.

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