The temple's founding legend, recorded in the Kamakura-period text Genko Shakusho, centers on a figure named Hodo -- an Indian sage who supposedly flew to Japan via Tang China and the Korean kingdom of Baekje, riding a purple cloud. Landing in Kamo County in old Harima Province (present-day Kasai, Hyogo), Hodo discovered a mountain shaped like an eight-petaled lotus flower and named it Mount Hokke, after the sacred mountain of the Lotus Sutra. He became known as the Empty Bowl Sage because he reportedly sent bowls flying through the air to collect rice offerings. Temples throughout eastern Hyogo claim Hodo as their founder, and scholars have speculated that a real Indian traveler may have inspired the cluster of legends. No documentary evidence has surfaced to confirm or deny this. What the story preserves is a memory of the routes by which Buddhism traveled -- from India through China and Korea to the mountains of western Japan.

The temple legend claims Hodo founded it 1,800 years ago during the Kofun period, praying for water in a drought-stricken land. When a spring erupted, the grateful community named the temple Kiyomizu-dera -- "Clear Water Temple" -- in its honor. While the founding myth lacks historical evidence, documented construction begins in 627, when a Konponchudo Hall was built at the command of Empress Suiko. A century later, in 725, the monk Gyoki constructed the Great Lecture Hall at the request of Emperor Shomu. These are significant names in Japanese history: Empress Suiko was Japan's first historically attested female sovereign, and Emperor Shomu was the great patron of Nara-period Buddhism who commissioned the Todai-ji Great Buddha. Their association with Banshu Kiyomizu-dera places the temple within the highest circles of early Japanese state religion.

The temple was destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly over its long history, and no documentation from the medieval periods has been preserved. The current structures date to 1917, rebuilt during the Taisho period. But what the buildings lost, the treasury kept. Among the temple's National Important Cultural Properties is a large-character copy of the Lotus Sutra from the Nara period and a set of three swords from the Heian period, claimed to be donations from the celebrated general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro -- the military commander credited with subduing the Emishi people in northeastern Japan. Those swords now reside at the Tokyo National Museum. The temple also holds Hyogo Prefecture-designated treasures including an Asuka-period artifact, a mid-Heian Kannon statue carved from a single piece of kaya wood standing 69.2 centimeters tall, and 41 scrolls comprising 608 items from various periods.

As the 25th stop on the 33-temple Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, Banshu Kiyomizu-dera occupies a specific place in a spiritual geography that stretches from Wakayama to Gifu. The pilgrimage route is one of the oldest in Japan, traditionally attributed to the monk Tokudo in the early eighth century and later revitalized by Emperor Kazan around 992. The temple's honzon -- its primary sacred image -- is a hibutsu, a concealed statue of Juichimen Kannon, the eleven-faced bodhisattva of compassion. Hibutsu are kept hidden from public view, shown only during special ceremonies or not at all. The tradition reflects a Buddhist theology where the most sacred things remain unseen, their power residing precisely in their concealment. Visitors who make the journey to this quiet hillside temple 12.5 kilometers east of Aimoto Station on the JR Fukuchiyama Line arrive not to see, exactly, but to stand in the presence of what is hidden.