Temples in Kyushu - North Vs South

Hi All,

Here is a bit of a strange one. I'm currently putting together my "Best of Japan" list and noticed that Northern Kyushu had a reasonable number of impressive temples, but there is a great dearth in the south of the island.

I have my suspicions that this could have been either because of the Meiji restoration had more zeal here AND/OR Shintoism was at it's strongest here due to the Japanese creation myths.

As you can see - this is a more of a specialized questions but I'm hoping that someone might know.

I assume you're asking about Buddhist temples. Yes, your assumption is true - the majority of these prefecture's temples were destroyed under the "haibutsu kishaku" policy in the Meiji period.
Here's a map showing the ranking of the prefectures by number of temples:
https://j-town.net/tokyo/column/allprefcolumn/200705.html?p=all
As the article mentions, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Kochi and Tottori were all zealous about modernization and destroyed their temples and castles (Kochi saved the castle). A little known fact is that Aichi is number one in Japan by temples count.
This article also lists the number of destroyed temples in southern Kyushu:
https://president.jp/articles/-/27140?page=2

Thanks for the info. It's good to see that I was crazy in thinking this. Seems to be rarely discussed - at least from what I've heard