Buddhist temples have a variety of buildings on the grounds, such as the hondo (main hall), the kuri(priest’s quarters) where monks reside, the kanetsukido (bell ringing building) and the mon (temple gate). Of these, the main halls is the center of a Buddhist temple where the principal image of Buddha statue subject to devotion is located. As the main halls covered in this research are exclude those designated as cultural properties by the Japanese government, even the oldest currently existing main halls are mainly from the early modern period or later, but the temples are old and over 60 percent of them were founded in the Momoyama Period or earlier.Although a transformation took place in the early modern period (Meiji era.), the people continued to visit temples and the practice of holding memorial services to ancestors and funerals has been passed on to the present day.

 Meanwhile, in the post-war period, reinforced concrete buildings increased mainly in urban areas, and there was an increase in main halls using multiple levels of non-wooden construction for a mixture of other uses such as the kuri or shoin (writing alcove). In this research, I reveal the state of traditional temples centered on wooden main halls and the mixed use of modern main halls in temples nationwide, which have diversified with the emergence of non-wooden construction.

 Temples with one to five buildings other than the main hall account for over 80 percent of all temples, and this is considered to be the standard number of buildings in a temple. Older temples founded in the Kamakura Period or earlier tend to have more buildings on their grounds, and comparatively newer temples established in the Edo Period under the terauke system tend to have fewer buildings on the temple grounds. The kuri where the chief priest residesis located on the grounds of 96.7 percent of the temples surveyed, with the other main buildings being the mon, kanetsukido, kyakuden (guest house), shoin and shuzoko (repository), and modern buildings on the grounds including nokotsudo (charnel house) and kindergarten.

 Some mixed-use main halls were completed in the prewar period such as in the Edo Period, but many of these are single story wooden structure complexes of the kuri, kyakuden and shoin. Meanwhile, many of the non-wooden structures and mixed structures completed in the postwar period have main halls with mixed use of multiple stories including the kaikan / shukaijo (hall / meeting house), jimusho (temple office) and nokotsudo, and newly established temples tend to have a different taste than the historical landscape created by main halls and complexes of temples.