A Couple pays their respects in the Yokohama Guan Yu Temple, where incense smoke wafts in the air

Couple paying at the Guan Yu Temple in Yokohama

Unlike the Yokohama Mazu Temple, which was built only about 15 years ago, this one is much older. A small shrine dedicated to Guan Yu was built in Yokohama in 1862, only three years after the opening of the port under the Japan-US Treaty of Amity and Commerce, during the Edo period. Only nine years later, after the Meiji Restoration, a full-fledged Chinese-style Guan Yu Temple was built with donations from overseas Chinese. The reason why the temple does not look old is because the current temple was rebuilt in 1990.

The same system applies to both the Mazu Temple and the Guan Yu Temple, where the cost of incense stick also serves as the entrance fee. You have to buy long Taoist incense sticks, which are different from the incense sticks you see in Japan, before you visit the temple. I bought an incense stick and walked into the temple. Just like the Chinese temples I had visited in Taiwan and Jakarta, Guan Yu, the name of the temple, is not the only deity enshrined in the Yokohama Guan Yu Temple. There are other gods enshrined here as well.

In addition to Guan Yu, there are also Guan Ping, Guan Yu's son, Zhou Cang, who is not a real person but is famous as Guan Yu's aide, Dimmu Niangniang, who you would expect to be a young girl from her name, and Kannon Bodhisattva, the God of Good Fortune. It is interesting to note that the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara of Buddhist origin is also casually enshrined among the Taoist deities.

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