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Making Sense of Japan’s Shrines and Temples: A quick scenic tour through Buddhism and Shinto in Japan
As so many of Japan’s great scenic places are shrines and temples, it’s useful to know a bit about the religions which make these places special to the Japanese. These religious beliefs and practices were an important part of Japanese life, and changed as the country changed over the centuries.
Asuka: Japan’s story begins
Though little visited by foreigners, the Asuka area is one of the best places to easily get out into Japan’s countryside. The area is famous among Japanese as the ancient heartland of the country, so is well set up with bike rentals by the station and trails through the fields. It makes a great day to bike among the tomb mounds and palace sites from the 600s where Japan’s recorded history begins.
Here in Asuka contact with Korea transformed early Japan in the 500s-600s, introducing the foreign religion of Buddhism, written language, better metal weapons, and the Chinese model of central government. A Korean King asking for military support sent Japan’s emperor a gift of a Buddhist statue, with a note that this new god would grant all prayers. The Japanese emperor was the chief priest of Japan’s native Shinto, and feared that worshipping a foreign god would anger the native gods, so he banned the new religion. However, he gave permission to the Soga clan, that was close to Korean immigrants in Japan, to try worshipping the foreign god. Eventually a civil war broke out over the acceptance of the new religion, and the Soga clan defeated the Shinto ritualists to win control of the country. The Soga then built Japan’s first major Buddhist temple complex, Asuka-dera. Only a modest temple now remains from the once vast temple site today, but it preserves Japan’s oldest extant statue of the Buddha, an impressive 12-foot bronze image of the Historical Buddha that attests to the Soga wealth and connections to Korean craftsmen in the 500s. The powerful Soga leader who drove the introduction of the new religion of Buddhism was buried in the grandest of the old-style Asuka tomb mounds, the Ishibutai tumulus.
The wealth and power of this early Japanese court is suggested by the great stone pyramid tomb of Empress Saimei near Asuka station. This empress was so close to her Korean that she built a vast armada to try to drive out the Chinese conquerors. The mighty Tang Chinese navy, however, immediately decimated Japan’s fleet, sending Saimei’s court fleeing from Asuka in fear of Chinese retaliation. The expected attack never came, but the very real threat convinced Japan’s powerful independent clans to support a central government to better defend the country. Saimei’s son Emperor Tenji then established a first central Japanese government modeled on China’s sophisticated imperial bureaucracy. With the advantage of their learnings from the continent, the Asuka elite soon came to control much of Japan. Their descendants still reign as Japan’s emperors today.
Asuka’s rural scenery is the main draw, but also of interest are the tomb paintings of elegant Asuka courtiers at the Takamatsuzuka Mural Museum; and the displays of Asuka-era life in the Manyo Museum. If the rice is green, the famously photogenic view of the Inabuchi terraced rice fieldsi is lovely.
Horyu-ji: Prince Shotoku gives imperial support to Buddhism
The best place today to experience a bit of Asuka-era Japan and early Buddhism is the splendid World Heritage monastery of Horyu-ji, off the main tourist track in a quiet suburb of Nara. Here Prince Shotoku first gave imperial support to Buddhism, putting the wealth and prestige of the imperial government into building a great monastery with the best art and architecture of the day to train Japan’s monks. Veneration of Shotoku as a founding saint of Japanese Buddhism has kept the temple an active religious organization for more than 1000 years. Its grand buildings and pagoda remain, remarkably preserved from the 600s, and its museum displays some of Japan’s earliest and best-loved art.
The Historical Buddha taught that life unavoidably brought suffering, suffering was caused by desire, and the way to reduce suffering was to rid oneself of worldly desires. But people also turned to more approachable deities. The Buddha of Healing Yakushi, was extremely popular for prayers, as was the the merciful bodhisattva Kannon, who had achieved enlightenment but instead of passing into Nirvana remained on earth to help people in need.
This imperially supported temple is also the Soga family temple, so it houses a statue of Shotoku, and the statue of the Buddha of healing that Shotoku offered in prayer for his father the emperor’s recovery from illness–shocking the court that th emperor, chief priest of Shinto, would dare to pray to this foreign deity.
Don’t miss the ethereal Kudara Kannon statue, and images of Prince Shotoku in the museum, and the National Treasure statue of the Buddha of the future, depicted as a meditative youth with a gentle smile, in the separate Chugu-ji courtyard.
Also of interest
Read more: Japan Best Places: The StoriesNara: City in the Deer Park
The Great Buddha
The city’s grand new national temple to protect the country is huge Todai-ji, whose lovely lantern in front features images of women in elegant Chinese dress playing musical instruments. Emperor Shomu built this temple to house the huge statue of the Buddha he built as a prayer offering to save the country from a raging epidemic, another recent import from China. The statue is even more impressive if one realizes what a huge technical achievement– and huge display of government power—casting such a large statue was in the 700s. Temple records say some 2 million workers worked on the project, carrying 500 tons of copper and 7 tons of beeswax to Nara from across the country for the lost- wax casting. Much of the work was done by corvee labor, people paying their annual tax to the government for their land.
This statue is not the Historical Buddha depicted in the earlier temples, but a more recent import from China, the Universal Buddha Dainichi, from whom all other Buddhas emanate. This Universal Buddha was better suited to the new state Buddhism, with its message of the central power of the emperor and the imperial court, from whom all other power emanated.
Todai-ji’s subtemples and museum, and the National Treasure Museum of neighboring Kohfuku-ji Temple, display a remarkable collection of masterworks of Tang-Chinese-style sculpture from the 700s when the temples were built, along with later Japanese works from the great Kamakura-era sculptors who restored the temples in the 1100s.
The Nara Deer
The religious city of Nara centers around a deer park, a sacred preserve where killing of animals is forbidden, as the first commandment of Buddhism is to kill no living thing. Nara’s deer park is modeled after the famous sacred Deer Park of Sarnath, in India, where the historical Buddha reached enlightenment and found his first disciples. The Nara deer are also sacred messengers of the Shinto Gods, cared for by the Kasuga Shrine, and protected in a large forested preserve around the shrine, a primeval forest largely untouched since the 700s. There are severe legal penalties for harming a sacred deer.
Kasuga Shrine
While the Nara court enthusiastically supported Buddhism, native Shinto also continued to flourish, as Buddhism and Shinto quickly learned to co-exist. The same powerful family that built Kohfuku-ji temple to pray to its Buddhist statues also built the Kasuga Shrine to pray to its family Shinto deities, who took up residence on Nara’s mountain.
The shrine is in a vast ancient forest, with features hundreds of stone lanterns donated in prayer lining the paths, and filigreed hanging lanterns lining the inner halls. The sacred center of the shrine is the open deck in the back that looks out on the forest where the gods reside. Like other shrines, people come to pray to the ancient gods of fertiliy for ihealthy children, and it does a busy business blessing happy new beginnings, from new babies and new marriages, to new businesses and new cars. Buddhist temples, meanwhile
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Toji and Mt. Koya: Mountain Discipline
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The wealthy temples of Nara eventually became so powerful that they threatened the power of the imperial court itself. So in the 800s the emperor move his capital away to the
Kyoto area where he could ban the old temples and their meddling monks.
The new city needed new monks for heeling illness and performing prayers to protect the country and conveniently two remarkable men returned from studing the latest in Chinese Buddhism to fill the void.
Mount Hiei: More Mountain Discipline
Byodo-in: Courtiers Faith in Amida in the latter days of the Law
Popular Buddhism: Salvation by faith in Amida, for everyone
