Founded in the first year of Hoki (770) at the end of the Nara period. At that time, Otomo Confucius, a hunter living in Naga District, Kii Province, always set his foothold on the trunk of a tree in a valley, and was hunting for wild boars and deer every night. One night, he discovered a bright place and decided to set up a bush in that place and built a hermitage.
Later, the child ascetic, who was given a night's stay, holed up in the hermitage for seven days and seven nights, carving a life-sized statue of the Thousand-Armed Kannon and leaving in order to fulfill Confucius' ancient wish (to enshrine a Buddha statue in the hermitage).
Later on, the only daughter of Sadayu, the ruler of Kawachi Province, was suffering from illness for a long time. A child ascetic came to visit her, recited the Senju Darani and prayed, and eventually her daughter recovered from her illness. The child wanderer refused the seven treasures that the rich man had offered as a thank you, and left with only the sagesaya (chopstick box) and hakama offered by his daughter, saying, ``I am from Kokawa, Naga District, Kii Province.''
In the spring of the following year, the Choja family visited Konakawa, but after having a hard time finding it, they took a rest by the stream, and suddenly noticed that the flowing water was as white as rice water, convinced that it was proof of Konakawa, and continued up the river. I found a hermitage. When he opened the door, he saw a Thousand-Armed Kannon enshrined there, and was holding a sagasaya and a hakama that the girl had given him, so it turned out that the wanderer was actually an incarnation of the Thousand-Armed Kannon. The origin of this opening is told in the Kokawa-dera Engi Emaki (National Treasure) owned by the temple.
At the time of its founding, Kokawa-dera Temple prospered with the faith of many people, and in the Kamakura period, it had seven temples, 550 temples, a vast precinct area of more than 4 km in each direction, and a temple territory of more than 40,000 koku. However, in 1585, it encountered Toyotomi Hideyoshi's war, and the magnificent temple and pagoda garan and many temple treasures were destroyed in a fire. Afterwards, with the patronage of the Kishu Tokugawa family and donations from believers, the existing halls were completed in the mid to late Edo period.
