Fuki-ji Temple: A Heian-Period Tendai Buddhist Temple in Japan
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Japan
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Unclassified
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Temple
On this page13 sections
History
Fuki-ji Temple is a Tendai Buddhist temple in Japan, located in Bungotakada, Ōita Prefecture. Its traditional foundation date is 718 and its foundation is attributed to the monk Ninmon, although the temple’s early history remains uncertain. The existing Ō-dō, or Great Hall, is thought to date from the twelfth century and reflects the religious culture of the late Heian period.
Foundation and the Usa religious network
Fuki-ji was probably established between the first half and middle of the twelfth century as a prayer temple for successive generations of the chief-priest family of Usa Jingū. An inscription dated 1147 on an oni mask shows that the temple existed by that time. A document from 1223 calls Fuki-ji the hereditary prayer temple of the Usa chief-priest family. It also records the donation of agricultural land and wasteland to support religious services, prayers for protection from disasters, prosperity, and the continuing prosperity of Usa Shrine.
The temple belonged to the Rokugō Manzan, a network of Buddhist temples and ascetic sites associated with the six regions of the Kunisaki Peninsula. The network developed from mountain worship and religious discipline, gradually taking institutional form from the late Nara to early Heian periods. It came under the authority of Miroku-ji, the shrine-temple of Usa Jingū. A shrine-temple, or jingūji, was a Buddhist institution attached to and serving a shrine. Miroku-ji was first associated with the Hossō school of Buddhism and became Tendai during the late Heian period.
During the first half of the twelfth century, the Rokugō Manzan temples strengthened their links with central Tendai institutions and were eventually donated to Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, the school’s principal center. A register of 1168 lists 28 principal temples and 37 subordinate temples, making 65 in all. Fuki-ji appears in the register as a subordinate temple of Nishiyama Takayamaji.
Fuki-ji also participated in the religious syncretism associated with Usa Jingū. This tradition, known as shinbutsu-shūgō, combined Buddhist worship with devotion to native kami, or sacred beings. A shrine dedicated to six deities of Usa Jingū was formerly located within the temple precincts.
The Great Hall and Pure Land devotion
The Ō-dō was probably built during the twelfth century, when the Usa chief-priest family held particular influence. Its strong Pure Land character is connected with the Pure Land faith of Usa Kimitō, a chief priest of Usa Jingū, and with the teachings of Genshin. Amida is the Buddha of the Western Pure Land, a realm of salvation in Mahayana Buddhism, and Pure Land devotion centers on faith, contemplation, and rebirth in Amida’s paradise. Genshin, a major Heian-period Tendai monk, helped shape Japanese ideas about Amida and the practices used to contemplate the Pure Land.
During the Tenshō era, from 1573 to 1592, many Buddhist temples were destroyed under the Christian daimyō Ōtomo Sōrin, whose rule was associated with the destruction of Buddhist institutions in Kyushu. Fuki-ji’s Ō-dō survived this period. The temple once consisted of a main residence called the Inshubō and six subsidiary residences. By 1751, only Minamino-bō continued religious activities. Daimonbō and Myōzō-bō had become farmsteads, while Tanino-bō, Higashino-bō, and Nakano-bō had been converted into rice paddies.
Damage, protection, and continuing ritual associations
The Ō-dō was protected by an enclosing structure called a sayadō until the Taishō period. Bombing during the Second World War damaged the building, including the loss of its roof. The temple precincts became a National Historic Site in 2013. The Ō-dō had already been designated a National Treasure in 1952, together with a fragment of an earlier ridge beam. That fragment preserves evidence of the hall’s roof history and records the involvement of the scholar-monk Yūzen in a renovation carried out in 1353.
On 3 December 2016, the court dance and continuous-walking meditation rite called jōgyō-zanmai was revived in connection with the thousandth memorial anniversary of Genshin. Tendai monks performed the rite, while musicians from the Nanto Gakuso presented the dances Karyōbin, Kochō, Ryōō, and Nasori. The performance renewed the association between the hall, Pure Land devotion, music, and dance.
Remains
Fuki-ji’s principal surviving structure, the Ō-dō, stands above a steep stone staircase on a raised area cut into a slope. The small wooden hall measures three bays across its front and four bays in depth, so it extends farther from front to back than from side to side. A broad walkway surrounds the building. The hall is a late-Heian Japanese-style structure and is regarded as one of the few surviving Heian-period buildings outside the Kinki region, as well as the oldest surviving wooden structure in Kyushu.
The Ō-dō
Structure and roof
The hall has a pyramidal, or hōgyō-style, roof with no ridge. It is covered with tiles laid using Gyōki-buki, a rare technique in which specially shaped tiles are inserted successively between adjoining tiles. The tiles narrow toward the top and widen toward the bottom, creating a layered surface. Two eaves with tall rafters give the roof its distinctive profile. Repairs replaced some elements, including the doors, and the present roof may not be the original one.
Interior arrangement and sculpture
Inside the Ō-dō, the altar stands at the rear, leaving a broad worship space in front. A Shumidan altar fills the inner sanctum. The principal image is a seated wooden Amida Buddha from the Heian period, 85.7 centimeters high and assembled from pieces of yew wood. It follows the Jōchō style, a refined Heian manner associated with calm proportions and an idealized, elegant treatment of Buddhist figures. The statue’s original lacquer finish has been lost.
A separate wooden Amida triad is also venerated in the hall. The central Amida measures 87.5 centimeters in height, while the Kannon figures on the viewer’s left and right measure 103 and 102.5 centimeters respectively. The figures are made of cedar and date from the Heian period. This group was apparently the hall’s original principal image.
Painted Pure Lands
Painted panels cover the walls and pillars. The surviving decoration includes a scene of Amida’s Pure Land on the rear wall behind the altar, four panels showing paired Amida figures on the small walls of the inner sanctum, and four panels representing the Pure Lands of the Four Buddhas on the outer-sanctum small walls. Much of the paint has flaked away, but the surviving work remains an important example of Heian-period painting.
The four directional Pure Lands place Medicine Buddha in the east, Shaka Buddha in the south, Amida in the west, and Maitreya in the north. Celestial beings play instruments and dance within the scenes. This musical and choreographic imagery is unusual among contemporary Pure Land paintings and expresses paradise through sound and movement. It also connects the decoration with the hall’s association with court music and dance.
Stone monuments and other objects
Funerary monuments
Five stone umbrella-shaped funerary monuments stand within the precincts and date from the middle of the Kamakura period. One was relocated to an outdoor area of the Beppu City Museum. Another separate monument stands west of the Ō-dō.
Sculptures, masks, and shrine features
The precincts contain a wooden Amida triad, a wooden bodhisattva mask carved from kaya wood, two camphor-wood demon-exorcism masks representing a man and a woman, a stone shrine, and a seated stone Jizō statue. The demon masks have been described as prototypes for the bell-bearing demon, or suzu-oni, associated with the Shujō Oni-e rite.
Memorial stele
A stone memorial stele commemorates the seventh death anniversary of the monk Yūzen. Its inscription gives the date as the twenty-fifth day of the seventh month in the sixth year of Enbun.
