The temple's founding legend centers on the Fujiwara clan during the Heian period. Fujiwara no Takafusa was traveling down the Yodo River toward Dazaifu in Chikuzen Province to take up a government post when he spotted fishermen hauling in a large turtle. He purchased the animal and set it free, noting that the eighteenth day of the month was Kannon's festival day. That same night, his son Yamakage was tricked by his stepmother and fell into the river. Takafusa prayed desperately to Kannon, and the rescued turtle appeared bearing Yamakage safely on its back. Overcome with gratitude, Takafusa vowed to commission a statue of Kannon. He died before fulfilling this promise, so Yamakage completed it himself, having a statue of Senju Kannon Bosatsu -- the Thousand-Armed Kannon -- carved and enshrined. According to temple tradition, construction began around 879 and finished in 890.

Fujiwara no Yamakage's legacy extends beyond temple founding into the rarefied world of Japanese culinary ceremony. He is credited as the originator of the Shijo-ryu knife ceremony, an extraordinary ritual in which a chef prepares fish using only a knife and chopsticks, never once touching the food with bare hands. The ceremony transforms butchery into choreography -- each cut deliberate, each movement precise, the chef's hands hovering above the ingredient as if handling something sacred. While Yamakage is honored as the tradition's founder, the first recorded performance dates to 1136, when Fujiwara no Ienari demonstrated carp knife-cutting before Emperor Shirakawa. The ceremony is still performed at Soji-ji every April 18th, linking the temple directly to centuries of Japanese culinary culture.

Like many temples in Japan, Soji-ji has a history written in cycles of destruction and renewal. During the Tensho era, between 1573 and 1593, Oda Nobunaga's forces burned the temple, and it fell into severe decline. Recovery came through an unexpected patron: Toyotomi Hideyori, the son of the great unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who rebuilt the main hall and restored the grounds in 1603. The compound visitors walk through today is largely an Edo-period creation, and nine of its buildings -- including the Hondo, Yakushi-Kondo, Niomon gate, and bell tower -- have been collectively designated as an Ibaraki City Tangible Cultural Property. The temple also preserves two illustrated picture scrolls, the Sojiji Engi Emaki, which depict the miraculous founding legend in painted scenes attributed to the artist Kaiho Yusetsu, who lived from 1598 to 1677.

Soji-ji belongs to the Koyasan Shingon-shu sect, and its principal image -- the Eleven-Headed, Thousand-Armed Kannon -- is classified as a hibutsu, a hidden or concealed image rarely shown to the public. This secrecy adds a layer of mystique to the pilgrimage experience. The Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, which links 33 temples across the Kansai region, is one of the oldest organized pilgrimage routes in Japan, and Soji-ji holds its place as number 22 on the circuit. The temple's picture scrolls, housed carefully within the compound, tell the founding story across nine sections of text and eight sections of illustration, with one version painted in the Yamato-e style of the Tosa school. Archaeologists have also uncovered Muromachi-period tile kilns on the temple's eastern slope, evidence of the self-sufficient economy that once sustained these religious communities.

Today Soji-ji is a five-minute walk from JR-Sojiji Station on the JR Kyoto Line, making it one of the most accessible temples on the Saigoku circuit. The compound opens with the Niomon gate, where fierce guardian statues flank the entrance. Inside, the paths lead past the Yakushi-do, Daishi-do, Kannon-do, and Emma-do, each hall dedicated to different aspects of Buddhist practice. The temple sits in Ibaraki, a residential city that lies between Osaka and Kyoto, rarely visited by international tourists but deeply woven into the regional fabric. For pilgrims, Soji-ji offers a stamp for their pilgrimage books and a moment of stillness between the route's more famous stops. The turtle motif appears throughout the grounds -- a persistent reminder that an act of compassion on the Yodo River, more than eleven centuries ago, set everything here in motion.