With the implementation of the mandatory Buddhist temple registration system in the Tokugawa period, some Buddhist temples gained stable, economic support for providing funerary services. Without this support Buddhist temples had to focus their activities on the secular needs of the ordinary people. The popular Buddhist deities with healing powers and the associated miracles became the main asset of these temples. The paper, by comparing the early-modern and (post) modern worship at the Soto Zen Koganji temple in Tokyo shows that not only the trans-sectarian and trans-national appropriation of the popular Healing Jizo Bodhisattva helped to contribute to this Zen temple's success, but the main trigger for its success derived from its immediate social and economic surroundings in the adjacent Jizo Street market.