The traditional story of the origins of this temple states that in 721, the pious monk Tokudo discovered a camphor tree, from which he carved two images of Kannon(both were eleven-face representations of the bodhisattva). The Kannon sculpted from the lower half of the camphor tree was enshrined in Hase-dera in the province of Yamato(present-day Nara prefecture). The image made from the upper half was cast into the sea with prayers that it would reach in the land to which it had a karmic connection and save sentient beings. It washed on shore sixteen years later, on the evening of the eighteenth day of the sixth month of 736, at Nagai, in the Miura Peninsula, glowing brightly, it was said, upon the waters. This wooden image of Kannon was later transferred to its present site in Kamakura, where it was enshrined as the central image in a new temple, which Tokudo was invited to establish. That is said to be the origin of Hase-dera.
In 1342, Ashikaga Takauji(1305-1358, the first Muromachi shogun) dedicated gold leaf to Hase-dera, and in 1392 Ashikaga Yoshimitsu(1358-1408, the third Muromachi shogun) commissioned a halo and dedicated it to the temple. These gifts and surviving records attest that Hase-dera had come into its full glory by the Kamakura Period(1185-1333).