The temple's founding story involves two accounts that do not quite agree. The official temple legend credits Emperor Shomu's divine dream in 724 AD. But the Chikubushima Engi, a chronicle compiled in 931, records that the monk Gyoki arrived on the island in 738, building a small chapel and enshrining statues of the Four Heavenly Kings. Gyoki was no ordinary monk -- he was a tireless builder of bridges, irrigation works, and temples across the Kinki region, beloved by ordinary people for his social works. In 753, a local lord named Azai Naomakai erected a statue of Senju Kannon on the island. Originally called Hongo-ji and administered under the great Todai-ji in Nara, the temple was gradually absorbed by the powerful Enryaku-ji monastery on Mount Hiei during the tenth century, becoming a Tendai institution. Chikubu Island transformed into a training ground where monks practiced in isolation, surrounded by water on every side.

The spiritual heart of Hogon-ji is Benzaiten, the goddess of water, music, eloquence, and learning -- Japan's adaptation of the Indian river goddess Sarasvati. The neighboring Tsukubusuma Shrine's guardian deity, Azaihime-no-mikoto, was a water deity of the Azai clan who controlled the lake. By the end of the Heian period, this local water goddess merged in popular worship with Benzaiten, the Buddhist water deity of Indian origin. The fusion was complete: temple and shrine became a single entity called Chikubushima Dajingu-ji. The island ranked alongside Enoshima Shrine and Itsukushima Shrine as one of Japan's Three Great Shrines of Benzaiten. Pilgrims arrived by boat to visit the 30th station on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage route. The hidden statue of Benzaiten -- a hibutsu, shown only on rare occasions -- remains the temple's honzon, its principal object of veneration.

Hogon-ji burned in 1232, again in 1454, and again in 1558. Each time it was rebuilt. The most significant reconstruction came in 1602, when Toyotomi Hideyori -- son of the legendary unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi -- ordered Katagiri Katsumoto to restore the temple. Hideyori did not just fund new construction; he transplanted existing masterworks. The ornate Karamon gate was relocated from the Toyokuni Mausoleum in Kyoto, where Hideyoshi himself was buried. The temple's Kannon-do was brought from the same site. Both are superb examples of Azuchi-Momoyama period architecture, rich with decoration and vivid color that stand in deliberate contrast to the temple's own understated elegance. The Karamon gate is now a National Treasure of Japan. Perhaps the most remarkable element is the open corridor connecting the temple to Tsukubusuma Shrine: it was constructed from the timbers of the Nihonmaru, Toyotomi Hideyoshi's personal ship. A warship became a walkway between faiths.

The Meiji government's forced separation of Shinto and Buddhism in the 1870s struck Hogon-ji harder than most temples. When the authorities demanded the split, the building that had served as the temple's main hall was reclassified as the honden of Tsukubusuma Shrine. In 1871, the Otsu Prefectural Government went further, ordering Hogon-ji abolished entirely. The temple fought back, insisting that Benzaiten was a Buddhist deity, not a Shinto kami, and therefore the temple had a right to exist independently of the shrine. The argument prevailed -- barely. The property was formally divided between temple and shrine in 1883. But the old main hall was gone, now belonging to the shrine. Hogon-ji operated without a proper main hall for decades until a new one was finally constructed in 1942. The architecture of that building, with its elevated platform and flowing rooflines, seems designed to float on the terrain rather than dominate it -- fitting for a temple dedicated to a water goddess.

Hogon-ji's cultural footprint extends into Japan's performing arts through the famous Noh play Chikubushima. In the play, a court official travels to Chikubu Island to pay homage at the shrine. An elderly couple ferry him across the lake in their fishing boat. The old woman reveals herself to be Benzaiten; the old man is the Dragon God of Lake Biwa. Both perform magnificent dances before returning to their divine realms. The play captures something essential about the island itself: that the ordinary surface conceals the extraordinary beneath. The temple's treasure house preserves Noh masks, tapestries depicting Benzaiten with her biwa lute, swords, and Buddhist statuary spanning centuries from the Heian through Edo periods. The collection includes a decorative sutra from the eleventh century, written on paper adorned with gold and silver ink designs of flowers and birds -- another National Treasure, now on loan to the Nara National Museum.