Hiraizumi â Temples, Gardens and Archaeological Sites Representing the Buddhist Pure Land is a grouping of five sites from late eleventh- and twelfth-century Hiraizumi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan. The serial nomination was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2011, under criteria ii and vi.
From around 1087, when Fujiwara no KiyohiraâÂÂfounder of the Northern Fujiwara clan, which ruled much of Tà ÂhokuâÂÂmoved his headquarters and residence southward after the Gosannen War, until 1189, when the clan was destroyed by the army of Minamoto no Yoritomo in the Genpei War, Hiraizumi served for four generations as the Northern Fujiwara's seat of power and grew to become a major political, military, commercial, and cultural centre in northeastern Japan.
Several major temples associated with Pure Land Buddhism were founded and endowed by the Northern Fujiwara, but the demise of their benefactors and a series of fires contributed to their subsequent decline. When the poet Bashà  visited in 1689 he famously wrote of the site in Oku no Hosomichi: summer grass... remains of soldiers' dreams. A series of excavations from the mid-twentieth century onwards combined with references in the Azuma Kagami chronicles, in particular the Bunji-no-chà «mon petition of 1189, and the Shà Âwa sojà  or "monks' appeal" of 1313 from the Chà «son-ji archives, has contributed much to the understanding of the sites and the period.
The original 2006 nomination of "Hiraizumi - Cultural Landscape Associated with Pure Land Buddhist Cosmology" included five further sites while omitting that of Kanjizaià Â-in as a separate component. Four were removed from the nomination after the failure to secure inscription in 2008; the component site of the Yanagi Palace was excluded from the 2011 inscription, although there are continuing efforts to secure its inclusion through future extension.