Day Three in Kyoto: Nishi Honganji

Our final leg in our tour of Kyoto and Nara was at the temple of Nishi Honganji in Kyoto. This was a special treat, because the Jodo Shinshu temple I go to in Seattle is part of Nishi Honganji sect, which has a large overseas presence for historical reasons, and it was nice to finally see the “mother ship”, so to speak. A warning, I should apologize for the quality of the photos that day, as they’re especially poor. It was just not a good day for me due to humidity and cumulative lack of sleep, but thankfully someone else did a much better job, so refer to this site for better photos of the same thing.

Anyway, on this day we were also treated to a behind-the-scenes tour of the temple, thanks to some friends at my temple in Seattle who helped arranged the tour with a friend at the International Honganji Center. Sadly I couldn’t take pictures of this part of the tour, but I’ll show you the pictures I could take, and explain the rest of what we saw. Because the Jodo Shinshu sect of Buddhism has such a large presence in Japan, it has often been at the center of history and culture, as much as more well-known temples.

The Nishi Honganji temple has two large buildings, among others, one devoted to Amida [Amitabha] Buddha called the Amidadō (阿弥陀堂) and the Founder’s Hall or Goeidō (御影堂) that sit next to each other.1 This is the Amida Hall, with a walkway running off the left where the Founder’s Hall is:

The Amida Hall of Nishi Honganji 2

And the Founder’s Hall here, though somewhat cut-off on my camera:

The Founder's Hall of Nishi Honganji

Between them is a large ginkgo tree, which according to this site and its excellent gallery, is over 400 years old:

Nishi Honganji Tree

Anyway, Nishi Honganji actually sits right in the heart of old Kyoto city, not up in the mountainside, so right off the sidewalk are two ancient gates, each pointing to one of the two halls. Here’s the Founder’s Hall Gate or Goeidōmon (御影堂門):

The Founder's Hall Gate of Nishi Honganji

And the more ornate Amida Hall Gate or Amidadōmon:

The Amida Hall Gate of Nishi Honganji

If you pass through either gate, there’s a small indoor tea-house behind them which we quickly ducked into as the weather was unseasonably cold (strange considering the previous day’s trip in Nara was quite pleasant). The tea house is quite modern, with vending machines and free tea for people. There was also a small, but very nice Jodo Shinshu style altar here:

Honganji Altar, tea room 2

My daughter, who had spent three days watching Daddy toss coins into wooden boxes, had become eager to try it out herself while all dressed up in “princess jewelry” we recently bought her at a toy store:

Daughter making donation

At this point, we met our tour-guide and proceeded behind the Founder’s Hall where we were led behind the scenes. According to our guide, the famous warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi was a big patron of Buddhist temples in Kyoto, contrary to Oda Nobunaga who tended to viciously destroy them, so the land that the Nishi Honganji is at now was donated by Hideyoshi. Our tour guide showed us a kind of parlour or waiting room first that had a lot of tiger motifs, and old wooden benches to sit and remove shoes on.

From there, we were escorted to a small outdoor area, where we saw a very old outdoor Noh Theater, very similar to the one shown here. Hideyoshi apparently was a big Noh patron, so the tour guide showed us how he sat further back in the audience, where the stages back wall had a special lighting trick that caused the wood stains to form an image of a gnarled pine tree. You couldn’t see it up on the front row, but sure enough, you could see it was as you sat further back. Also, the stage was designed in a very clever way to look much larger than it was, by aligning stones on the ground around it the right way, by visual tricks in how the back entrance was smaller than the audience’s door, and other subtle architectural tricks. Really quite amazing.

From there, we were escorted through various quarters at the Honganji where Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the Otani family (head of the Nishi Honganji sect) stayed and entertained guests. In one large room, the back wall where Hideyoshi would hold public audiences, again used clever visual tricks in the mural to make the warlord look larger than he was, as well as the way the rooms next to it all fed into that room. The hallways used asymmetric architecture, which is a popular medieval style that’s purely Japanese, as opposed to symmetric Chinese-style architecture in Japan.

In another set of private rooms, the walls had gorgeous murals of nature scenes, birds and also the rising moon overhead. The tour guide explained that the handmaidens of Hideyoshi would almost always stay indoors and had little sense of time, apart from which room they had to stay in. Thus the rooms had day or night scenes on them, allowing the handmaidens to know what time of day it was.

Separately, we also saw a large outdoor, vaguely zen-like garden of stones and shrubs. The different sections of the garden and their plants and rocks formed shapes of animals like dragons, cranes and such. It was a very peaceful scene, though not used for meditation as you would expect in a Zen garden.

Finally we were taken to another audience hall where Hideyoshi and his retinue stayed to eat dinner or hold an audience. One side of the room was raised higher (typical design), with part of that room raised even higher. Our guide explained that occasionally a representative of the Imperial Family, the regents (Fujiwara family or its branch families) would attend the audience if necessary, but the extra high section was screened off so people could not see the Imperial family face to face.

As we left the private area of the Honganji, we were taken to the Karamon (唐門, Tang Dynasty Gate):

The Karamon Gate of Nishi Honganji

According to our guide, this gate existed solely to greet messengers from the Imperial Family, as opposed to the public gates. At this point, the tour was finished and we accompanied our guide to the Honganji bookstore, where we picked up some items. I was glad to finally get a copy of all three Pure Land sutras in one prayer book (in Sino-Japanese) and separately a translation. This was quite a treat to find, as most temples only sell prayer books with the Heart Sutra.

Our guide also took us to the Amida Hall where I took this picture of the inner-sanctum:

Inside the Amida Hall 2

The picture was poor, but it was nice to be right there at the center of Jodo Shinshu, so we knelt, recited the nembutsu in gratitude and left. Our tour guide was a very kind fellow, and an excellent guide, so we entrusted him with a donation to the International Center, and parted ways.

From here, we were stuck looking for lunch, but not surprisingly all the shops near the Honganji were for religious supplies, and no food. We stumbled down the street onto another Jodo Shinshu sect’s home temple, Kōshōji (興正寺) and the sub-sect with the same name. The Japanese-language website is here. Its existence is due to a complicated struggle between the old Bukkōji sect and the Honganji sect, which favored the Bukkōji sect originally until Rennyo’s time when fortunes shifted toward the latter. According to Wikipedia, the next heir of Bukkōji, Kyogo (d. 1490) switched allegiances to Rennyo and spinned off another sub-sect. Not surprisingly, the Koshoji temple sits on the same street as the Nishi Honganji temple, though the family crest and such are somewhat different. We were happy to stop there when we realized they had a cafe, but were disappointed to see the cafe was a smoking cafe, and not suitable for our little three-year old. I wanted to stay and study further (they have a nice library, and lodging for guests), but we were hungry and had to make our train back to Tokyo.

Eventually we went back to the hotel, ate there, and checked out. I was sad to leave Kyoto and Nara, but the experience provided a wealth of books, sutras, and experiences that made it all worth it.2 My wife also commented that people in Kyoto/Nara were a lot friendlier and laid back than Tokyo, and the taxi drivers were quite helpful. If we ever win the lottery, we’ll buy a home there and move. Or at least that’s what one of our dreams. :)

So that’s it for Kyoto and Nara. Next on our tour is the Tokyo shrines and temples I visited with “Johnl”, coming up soon.

Namu Amida Butsu

1 Our tour guide later explained that the Higashi Honganji has a very similar design, but in reverse, so as to distinguish itself from the Nishi Honganji temple.

2 Think of me as the nerdy, chubby, western version of Xuanzang. :-p


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