Site of Daianji Temple
Daianji Temple was a Jodo (Pure Land) Buddhist sanctuary founded in 1605 to serve as the future burial site of Okubo Nagayasu (1545–1613), the first government-appointed magistrate overseeing the Iwami Ginzan silver mine. A skilled administrator and expert on mining matters, Okubo was assigned to this position soon after the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate that ruled Japan from 1603 to 1867, gained control over the mine in 1600. Okubo is credited with laying the foundations for the mine’s greatest period of prosperity, and was later promoted to a position that involved the supervision of many of the realm’s most plentiful sources of precious metals.
Okubo’s tomb at Daianji—a monument rather than an actual repository for remains—was prepared long before his death at the age of 69. A cemetery later developed around the tomb, as more and more local people chose to be buried on the grounds that honored the famous magistrate. The temple endured until 1943, when heavy flooding and a series of landslides destroyed its buildings. Only part of the graveyard, including Okubo’s tombstone, remains today and can be visited by climbing the stone staircase from the Ginzan River walking path.