Main hall or Main Temple is the building within a Japanese Buddhist monastery compound (garan) which enshrines the main object of veneration. Because the various denominations deliberately use different terms, this single English term translates several Japanese words, among them butsuden, butsu-dō, kondō, konpon-chūdō, and hondō. Hondō is its exact Japanese equivalent, while the others are more specialized words used by particular sects or for edifices having a particular structure.

Buddhist temples or monasteries are the most numerous, famous, and important religious buildings in Japan. The shogunates or leaders of Japan have made it a priority to update and rebuild Buddhist temples since the Momoyama period. The Japanese word for a Buddhist monastery is tera (寺), and the same kanji also has the pronunciation ji, so temple names frequently end in -dera or -ji. Another ending, -in (院), is normally used to refer to minor temples. Examples of temple names that have these suffixes are Kiyomizu-dera, Enryaku-ji and Kōtoku-in.