HATSUKAICHI, HIROSHIMA PREF. \u2013 A hall linked to Buddhist saint Kukai (774-835) on Miyajima island in the city of Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, burned to the ground Wednesday, local police and firefighters said.<\/p>\n
Firefighters received around 8:30 a.m. an emergency call saying there was a fire at the Reikado hall, which belongs to Daishoin, a main temple of the Omuro School of Shingon Buddhism, and was founded in 806 by Kukai, also known as Kobo Daishi.<\/p>\n
A hut near the hall burned down as well. Areas totaling about 30 square meters were burned.<\/p>\n
Flames later spread into nearby woodland on the island, but were brought under control shortly after 10:30 a.m. No injuries have been confirmed.<\/p>\n
Located near the summit of Mount Misen, Reikado houses the \u201ceternal flame,\u201d which the temple says has been burning for nearly 1,200 years since Kukai started the fire for a goma prayer as a monk.<\/p>\n
An official of Daishoin moved the eternal flame to a different location, according to the temple. Fire authorities said that the hall may have caught fire due to the flame.<\/p>\n
The eternal flame served as the seed fire for the Flame of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in the city of Hiroshima, which was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II.<\/p>\n
The Reikado also burned down, in 2005, but a monk was able to preserve the flame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HATSUKAICHI, HIROSHIMA PREF. \u2013 A hall linked to Buddhist saint Kukai (774-835) on Miyajima island in the city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6985,8,20733,20732,33,20734],"class_list":["post-25881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-hiroshima","tag-japan","tag-kukai","tag-miyajima","tag-nihon","tag-temples"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}