Hokokuji Temple

Hokokuji Temple, known across Kamakura as the Bamboo Temple, sits in the Jomyoji area of eastern Kamakura and is best known for a grove of roughly 2,000 bamboo stalks growing behind its main hall. Most visitors come specifically for the bamboo grove and its tea house, not for general temple sightseeing, and this guide treats that as the honest starting point rather than presenting Hokokuji as a must-see historic stop for every Kamakura visitor.

The grove is smaller and more enclosed than Kyoto's Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, Japan's best-known bamboo forest. Arashiyama is a longer public path through an expansive forest, while Hokokuji's grove is a compact garden feature within a working Zen temple, walked through in a few minutes rather than toured at length. Travelers who have already seen Arashiyama should expect something smaller and quieter here, not a substitute of equal scale.

The temple was founded in 1334, during the early Muromachi period, as a Rinzai school Zen temple with ties to the Ashikaga and Uesugi clans, two of medieval Japan's most powerful samurai families. Its main hall was rebuilt in the 1920s after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, so the buildings standing today are a 20th-century reconstruction of a much older foundation. Behind the temple, several small caves called yagura, cut into the hillside during the Kamakura period, are believed to hold the remains of Ashikaga clan members.

A narrow stone path leads through the bamboo grove to a tea house at its far end. Sunlight filters through the bamboo canopy overhead, and the path is short enough to walk without stopping in a few minutes, though most visitors slow down to take photographs along the way.

Kyuko-an, the temple's tea house, serves matcha with a traditional sweet for an additional ¥600 on top of the ¥400 garden admission. Both are cash only, with no online reservation for either. Matcha orders typically stop around 3:30 PM, half an hour before the temple's 4:00 PM closing time, so plan for tea early in a visit rather than at the end.

Beyond the bamboo, the grounds include stone pathways, moss, and a small garden pond near the tea house area. The main hall houses a statue of Shaka Nyorai, the historical Buddha, and remains the temple's spiritual center even though most visitors come specifically for the grove behind it.

Hokokuji sits in the Jomyoji area, Kamakura's quietest and most spread-out temple cluster, apart from the walkable Kita-Kamakura temple group and the Hase-area coast around the Great Buddha and Hasedera Temple. It has no train station of its own, so reaching it means a bus ride or a 30 to 40 minute walk from Kamakura Station, covered in full below.

Is the detour worth it? For travelers who specifically want the bamboo grove and the matcha experience, yes, since neither is duplicated inside central Kamakura. For a first visit already built around the Kita-Kamakura temples or the Great Buddha and Hasedera on the Hase side, Hokokuji is the attraction most likely to get cut for time, since it adds a bus ride or a long walk in a different direction. It suits travelers building a fuller day around eastern Kamakura's Jomyoji-area temples more than those trying to cover Kamakura's core sights in one rushed loop.

The bamboo itself is evergreen, so the grove holds its character in every season. Fresh green growth stands out most in spring and summer, and foliage color in the surrounding garden peaks from mid-November to early December, while the temple closes only for the New Year holiday period, December 29 through January 3.