Buddhist temples in Japan
Buddhist temples or monasteries are (along with Shinto shrines) the most numerous, famous, and important religious buildings in Japan.
[note 1] The shogunates or leaders of Japan have made it a priority to update and rebuild Buddhist temples since the Momoyama period (late 16th century).
[2] In Japan, Buddhist temples co-exist with Shinto shrines and both share the basic features of Japanese traditional architecture.
Religious mass gatherings do not take place with regularity as with Christian religions and are in any event not held inside the temple.
The reason for the great structural resemblances between the Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines lies in their common history.
[7] With the arrival of Buddhism in Japan in the 6th century, shrines were subjected to its influence and adopted both the concept of permanent structures and the architecture of Buddhist temples.
[11] For example, Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's giant Niō (the two wooden wardens usually found at the sides of a temple's entrance), being objects of Buddhist worship and therefore illegal where they were, were sold to Jufuku-ji, where they still are.
[11] Buddhist architecture in Japan is not native, but imported from China and other Asian cultures over the centuries with such constancy that the building styles of all Six Dynasties are represented.
[13] Partly due also to the variety of climates in Japan and the millennium encompassed between the first cultural import and the last, the result is extremely heterogeneous, but several practically universal features can be found nonetheless.
Unlike both Western and some Chinese architecture, the use of stone is avoided except for certain specific uses, for example temple podia and pagoda foundations.
[13] The general structure is almost always the same: post and lintel support a large and gently curved roof, while the walls are paper-thin, often movable and in any case non-carrying.
The post and lintel structure embodies the Axis Mundi of an iconic form of the Buddha that is typically represented in pagodas and Indian stupas.
[13] The slightly curved eaves extend far beyond the walls, covering verandas, and their weight must therefore be supported by complex bracket systems called tokyō.
Even in cases as that of Nikkō Tōshō-gū, where every available space is heavily decorated, ornamentation tends to follow, and therefore emphasize rather than hide, basic structures.
[13] Being shared by both sacred and profane architecture, these architectonic features made it easy converting a lay building into a temple.
[15] When visited today it barely holds its grandeur it once had as there are no clear marks of where the original halls were and now the main scene is the parking lot with tour buses.
The Kondō (Golden Hall) is a double-roofed structure, supported by thick, strong pillars, and giving a feeling of boldness and weight.
A Buddhist temple complex in Japan generally follows the pattern of a series of sacred spaces encircling a courtyard, and entered via a set of gates.
For example, Enryaku-ji, which sits atop Mount Hiei to the north-east of Kyoto, is said to defend the city from evil spirits by being placed in that direction.
Eight centuries after the founding of Enryaku-ji, the Tokugawa shogunate established Kan'ei-ji in a similar direction for the protection of their Edo Castle.
[21] The present location was carefully chosen as the most propitious after consulting a diviner because it had a mountain to the north (the Hokuzan (北山)), a river to the east (the Namerikawa) and a great road to the west (the Kotō Kaidō (古東街道)), and was open to the south (on Sagami Bay).
[21] Each direction was protected by a god: Genbu guarded the north, Seiryū the east, Byakko the west and Suzaku the south.
[21] Geomancy lost in importance during the Heian period as temple layout was adapted to the natural environment, disregarding feng shui.
In addition to geomantic considerations, Buddhist temples, like any other religious structures, need to be organized in order to best serve their various purposes.
In many temples, there is little more than a wooden railing dividing the sacred space with that of the laypeople, but in many others there is a significant distance, perhaps a graveled courtyard, between the two.
[25] A 15th-century text[26] describes how Zen school temples (Sōtō (曹洞), Rinzai (臨済))[27] included a butsuden or butsu-dō (main hall), a hattō (lecture hall), a kuin (kitchen/office), a sō-dō (building dedicated to Zazen), a sanmon (main gate), a tōsu (toilet) and a yokushitsu (bath).
[30] Even though they may be located at the bottom of a valley, temples are metaphorically called mountains and even the numbers used to count them carry the ending -san or -zan (山), hence the name sangō.
This tradition goes back to the times when temples were primarily monasteries purposely built in remote mountainous areas.
The character in (院), which gives the ingō its name, originally indicated an enclosure or section and therefore, by analogy, it later came to mean a cloister in a monastery.
