Kyoto. John H. Martin
garden in which Kobori used stones from Fushimi Castle after Ieyasu had it leveled in 1620, five years after Ieyasu had eliminated the last of the Toyotomi family.
The narrow lanes between Kodai-ji and Higashi-oji-dori once held the homes of Kyoto’s well-to-do. The changes that occurred after World War II led to the abandonment of these villas by merchants who could no longer afford to maintain them. Now the villas have become inns and tea houses. It is an interesting area to wander about, particularly in the evening when the inns and tea houses along the narrow lanes come to life.
6 DAIUN-IN (GION CART) TEMPLE
Continuing to the north on Kita-mon-mae-dori from Kodai-ji and Bunnosuke-jaya, you cannot help but be reminded that the Yasaka (Gion) Shrine is not too far distant, for looming up ahead is what seems to be a gigantic Gion cart such as is pulled along the central streets of Kyoto every mid-July during the Gion Festival. The structure, however, is immense and obviously permanent. What you see is actually no cart: it is the huge and extra ordinary pagoda of the Daiun-in Temple, a pagoda that was constructed in the shape of a gigantic multistory Gion Festival cart in concrete. Kita-mon-mae-dori comes to an end as you walk north, and you must take a right turn and then a left turn at the next street on the left. This places you before the entrance to the Daiun-in. (The temple is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Entry fee.)
The Daiun-in Temple resembles a huge Gion cart.
The Daiun-in Temple buildings are 20th century and are an unusual addition to the Kyoto scene. The temple precincts are entered through the Administrative Building, with the large room to the right of the entry hall serving as a museum of the temple’s treasures. As its focal point are a standing image of Amida with a seated monk to the right and the image of a medieval official to the left. The cases in the room display scrolls and other articles of a religious nature. A path from the entry building leads along a garden on the right to the entry to the pagoda. At the base of the pagoda is an altar with a seated image of Amida, hands in a contemplative position. Behind the image, an aureole holds small raised Buddha figures, which stand out from the traditional 1,000 Buddha images impressed in the aureole. A series of stairways from the entry hall lead up to the two outer platforms at the top of the pagoda, the walls and ceilings along the way covered with paintings depicting the Buddhist murals in the Dun Huang caves of western China. Explanations of the paintings are provided in both Japanese and English. The two outside platforms under the roof of the pagoda provide an excellent view over Kyoto on three sides, with the Higashiyama mountain range on the fourth side to the east.
7 MARUYAMA PARK
Leaving the Daiun-in and continuing north on the path, one comes to the beginning of Maruyama Park (Maruyama Koen) straight ahead and on the right. The rear portion of the Yasaka (Gion) Shrine (not to be confused with Yasaka Pagoda) is on the left. But first a digression is in order to a small temple at the beginning of the slope of Higashiyama range on the right, a temple associated with a much-loved romantic and tragic story.
CHORAKU-JI A road runs eastward along the south side of Maruyama Park in the direction of the mountains. At the end of this roadway lies a long stone stairway which leads to the Choraku-ji Temple. The temple is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Entry fee. Choraku-ji was built by priest Saicho (Dengyo Daishi), one of the two major Buddhist priests at the time of the founding of Kyoto in the 790s. The temple was created sometime between 782 and 806 by the Tendai sect, but it was rebuilt in the 14th century by Priest Ippen, who converted it to the Ji sect of Buddhism (see below). Successive emperors worshipped here, and thus the temple had a degree of prominence.
A minor temple today, Choraku-ji is best known for the most noted individual associated with it: Taira-no-Tokuko, better known as the former Empress Kenrei-mon-in. At the sea battle of Dan-no-ura between the Taira and Minamoto clans in 1185, she and her mother-in-law (who was holding Kenrei-monin’s seven-year-old son, the Emperor Antoku) jumped into the sea with the child to end their lives when the battle was lost. The Empress had also flung herself into the sea to escape capture by the Minamoto forces, but she was saved from drowning by being dragged from the water by her long hair. Sent back to Kyoto, she lived in a small hut belonging to a poor priest, and at 29 she took the tonsure at Choraku-ji. As an added catastrophe after the deaths of her family and her degradation, an earthquake destroyed the miserable hut in which the former Empress had taken refuge. She was moved to the Jakko-in Temple in the Ohara region to a 10 square foot (1 sq m) retreat, and there she lived out her life in prayer.
Up the long stone stairway of this hillside site, the entrance to the Choraku-ji Temple leads to a further climb to the only early buildings that remain today: the Hondo (Main Hall), Shoro (Bell Tower), Kuri (Priests’ Quarters)— and a modern Treasure House which completes the complex. The small Hondo has a double roof and, within, a black lacquer altar has a noted image of Priest Honen in its sometimes closed altar case. The Shoro is to the left (north) of the Hondo, and beyond it a little way further up the hillside is a charming dell. Here, a small open but roofed unit holds two Jizo images. Beyond it is a small waterfall descending from the hillside, and across the resulting rivulet is an equally small Shinto shrine to the deity of the temple land.
Adjacent to the shrine is the modern Treasury. Within it on the left wall is a picture of Kenreimon-in as a nun with Awa-no-Naishi, her faithful aide. The statues of seven priests once associated with the temple are ranged across the back of the building. In the row of priests, the end two are seated images while the third from the left is a monk in a Chinese-style chair. The middle image, carved by Kosho in 1420, is of Ippen Shonin, founder of the Ji sect of Buddhism, which was dedicated to the continuous repetition of the Nembutsu (“All Praise to Amida”). (Ippen chose as his Buddhist name a word which means “for one and for all,” indicative of how the Nembutsu usage was making Buddhism a universal religion in Japan rather than just an aristocratic religion as it had first been.) The full-length statue of priest Ippen chanting the Nembutsu, with the small Amida images issuing from his lips as he walks on a pilgrimage, is stiff and angular, and it is nowhere as successful in portraying a walking devotee of Amida as is the image of Kuya in the Rokuhara-mitsu-ji Temple. Its sharply carved cheeks are reminiscent of the style of carving employed in Noh masks.
HIGASHI OTANI CEMETERY Returning down the path from the Choraku-ji, on the left hand side of the street is the entrance to the Higashi Otani mausoleum and cemetery. The grounds and temple are open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. without charge. Established in 1671 as a mortuary chapel for the abbots of the Higashi Hongan-ji Temple in central Kyoto, Higashi Otani has become an important cemetery since a portion of the cremated ashes of Priest Shinran Shonin, the founder of the Jodo Shinshu sect of Buddhism, was reburied here in 1653. Followers of this sect often desire to have their cremated remains buried close to the ashes of the founder. A handsome gateway decorated with carvings of chrysanthemums and other flora provides an entrance to the grounds, and then a sloping path turns to the right. Ahead on the right is the roofed Purification Basin with an extended bronze dragon from whose mouth the water issues. Directly beyond this structure is a long temple building with a hall for funeral services. Across from these units is the small Hondo (Main Hall) with its altar figure of Amida sculpted in wood. A shrine on the right holds a portrait of Shinran and one of Prince Shotoku, while on the left are portraits of past abbots of the Higashi Hongan-ji Temple. Behind the Hondo are other temple buildings not open to the general public.
In front of the Hondo, a flight of steps to the east lead up to the forecourt before the massive Mausoleum of Shinran. A small roofed oratory stands before a richly ornamented Kara-mon (Chinese-style gate) to Shinran’s tomb, a lattice-fenced wall stretching to the right and left of the gateway. Behind the gate is a plain granite wall which encompasses the Tomb of Shinran. Rectangular in shape, it is 30 feet (9 m) high with a circumference of 102 feet (30.6 m). The wall is crowned in front with a tiger-shaped stone, said to have been Shinran’s favorite. Returning down the steps to the level of the Hondo, a short path to the left (south) passes the temple bell and through a gate. To the left, rising tier upon tier up the hillside, is the Higashi Hongan-ji Cemetery, crowded with thousands of tombstones. Part way up the hillside is a memorial building. On August 15th each year, the 20,000 graves are decorated with candles as a part of the service for the dead, whose souls return briefly