More on New Year’s Eve Visit to Jodo Shu Temple

This post is dedicated to “Stephen” who recently completed his ordination. Well done!

For my recent visit to Japan, I took part in the New Year’s Eve bell-ringing service, or joya no kane (除夜の鐘) at local temple near my wife’s house in Kawasaki, Japan. This was also my first visit to a Jodo Shu Buddhist temple and service. Believe it or not, I’ve never seen any Buddhist services other than Jodo Shinshu or Shingon Buddhism, so I am pretty ignorant of what other Buddhist services are like, even when they’re in related Buddhist groups.

The temple I visited with my father-in-law was a temple named Tōmyōji (東明時), and is a Jodo Temple affiliated with Chion-in temple in Kyoto, making it part of the Chinzei branch I think. Anyways, I can’t post pictures since the camera is still with my wife in Japan, so I will describe what I saw. The temple, when you first walk through the gate, has a large platform on the left with the temple bell hanging down, and just in front of that, a small devotional altar to Kannon Bodhisattva. The temple itself is to the front, up a bunch of stairs.

We sat down in foldout chairs in the temple’s main altar room. The altar was really lovely. Like most Japanese Buddhist temples, the inner sanctum is blocked off for the priests only, and to the left was a picture of Honen, while to the right was a picture of Prince Shotoku, who is kind of like the Father of Japanese Buddhism for his efforts in promoting it in early Japanese history. The altar itself was quite nice, and large. The altar was multi-tiered so that Amida Buddha was seated at the top and back, kind of far away, with the two bodhisattvas, Kannon and Seishi, seated to the side. I do have a picture of this I’ll post when my wife gets back with the camera. It was unusual to see Amida Buddha seated, since most images show him standing, but in this particular case, the altar was too tall to allow him to stand. The altar itself, with all its gold hangings and such, gave the impression of Amida Buddha seated in the Pure Land itself, as if something out of the sutras. Someone did a really nice job decorating the altar.

The temple was like many temples in Japan in that it was run by a certain family, and the priest was the father, while his two sons assisted with the service. After the service started, the father knelt in front of the altar, while the two boys were at the sides of the altar either hitting a drum or assisting with chanting. The father was dressed, from what I could see, very similar to how I’ve seen Shingon and Tendai priests dress, with the pointed hat, and color of robes (purple in this case). Most of my experiences with Buddhism were with Jodo Shinshu, where the priests dress differently.

The chanting was also different in that the nembutsu was recited very throaty, almost like croaking. I remember Dogen, founder of Soto Zen, having some harsh words for reciting the nembutsu in his treatise, the Bendōwa (弁道話):

Constant repetition of the Nembutsu is also worthless-like a frog in a spring field croaking night and day.

I’m joking when I say this, but the nembutsu recited here really did sound like deep throaty, croaking, which I heard somewhere was a common way to recite the nembutsu in some Japanese services. In an all seriousness, the service was very solemn. Later, when they recited from the sutras, I was surprised to see I knew the words: it was the same liturgy we’d chant in the Jodo Shinshu services I knew back in Seattle, namely, the Juseige, which is an excerpt of the Immeasurable Life Sutra.

Finally we were all given numbers form 1 to 108, and then led out to the temple to line up next to the bell. I was number 35, which was pretty lucky. As expected, we took turns going up to the temple bell, which looked similar to this one, ushered by the two sons. We’d pull back the long ringer and then pull forward into the bell to ring it. It takes a surprising among out force to really get a strong ring. I had rung the bell at the Jodo Shinshu temple in Seattle a while back, so they were surprised to see I had done it before. I did a decent ring, not too loud, not too weak.

The timing was good too since right around that time 2009 came.

It was a very fun experience in any case, and I felt really privileged to go. As I’d never seen a Jodo Shu service before, nor taken part in Joya no Kane before, I learned a lot.

Namu Amida Butsu

P.S. Later in the week, my father in law gave me a Jodo Shu service book not from that temple, but another in the area. The liturgy is pretty similar, though somewhat condensed, to the one explained here. I hope to do some more research on it this weekend.