Pagoda at Zentsu-ji, Kagawa

This temple is located in Zentsu-ji City, Kagawa, Shikoku Island and established by Kukai, the founder of Singon sect Buddhism in Japan, in 813. Kukai's temples feel quite open and friendly and he's been a great cultural hero loved by the Japanese people. Kukai's temples attract lots of pilgrims and tourists.

This pagoda was first built in the early 9th century but collapsed by gale or burned in fires total three times after its original completion. The present one is the fourth reconstruction, 45 meters high, and serves as a landmark of the temple. The previous pagoda was consumed in a fire in 1840 and the emperor announced that the pagoda be rebuilt in 1845. It was finally completed in 1902. 

The Shin-bashira heart pillar is suspended and there's some space between the pillar and the Shin-so base stone. There are only several examples of this type of Shin-bashira installation. I so far confirmed five. They were all built in the 20th century or later. This is the fourh method of installing the heart pillar.

The most famous example of this type should be the one at Nikko. Nikko is so artificially colorful and sculpted that the complex including the five storied pagoda is not my cup of tea. Though the Nikko area is one of the world cultral heritage sites in Japan.

Kojo-ji pagoda again

Here's one of the monuments showing Hirayama's sketch printed on a tile.

                              Note the sculpted pieces beneath the eaves.

The first level rafters are joined like an umbrella; whereas the second and third ones lie parallel to each other. Here's the first level.

Kojo-ji temple and its three storied pagoda

There are more than 700 islands in the Seto Inland Sea. One of them is Ikuchi-jima, Hiroshima Pref. There stands a temple with a painted and sculpted three storied pagoda completed in 1432, designated a national treasure. The temple stands on a hill with its pagoda higher on the hill.


HIRAYAMA Ikuo(1930-2009) is one of Japan's representative artists in the 20th century and served as president of Tokyo University of the Arts for about 16 years. He was born in this island and survived the A-bomb as a young student in Hiroshima at the age of 15. He completed 60 watercolor sketches at 60 locations around the Shimanami Scenic Sea Route linking the Honshu Main Land and Shikoku Island with bridges and islands such as Ikuchi-jima in the Seto Inland Sea.


I found three at this temple.


The Shin-bashira heart pillar stands from the attic of the first floor. All three storied pagodas built from the end of the 12th century adopted this method of erecting the heart pillar. This method was also employed for five storied pagodas but only a limited number of this type have been confirmed. I counted up to five. Probably just five are extant. And not many were built. This is the third oldest way of installing the heart pillar of the five storied pagodas.

1300-year-old Pagoda at Horyu-ji temple

Please do spend a day at Horyu-ji temple, the very repository of Japanese ancient culture from the 7th to 8th century. Every fall, I have a privilege to spend two hours showing the temple to my guests and then take them to a small but very special restaurant near To-in, the east compound of the temple. The restaurant is a remodeled Japanese house, where I’m sure you can experience living Japan. The meal is very healthy and tasty with rustic Nara touch. You might be able to feel that you are invited to someone’s house in Nara.

Since I plan well (believe me), the two-hour tour turns out to be fun but if you are alone, no rush and spend at least three hours or more. Besides the ancient architecture, the Daiho-zo-in treasure house is worth visiting and staying long enough. Each exhibit is hard to miss. One of the clay statues has a part of its clay peeled but thank to that, the wooden core underneath became visible. Amazingly, there you see carved wooden toes, which would never have been witnessed by anyone without the accidental peel. The admission is included in the ticket you may purchase.

I recommend you visit on foot the other two temples nearby, Hokki-ji temple and Horin-ji temple. At Hokki-ji, you can get to see the oldest three storied pagoda in Japan. At Horin-ji, the three storied pagoda, the labor of love, reconstructed by master carpenter NISHIOKA Tsunekazu, the last master carpenter exclusively for Horyu-ji greets you.

I need to introduce this respected man of great skill and his determined way of life in another article. What he did and what he said are so inspirational. But here, let me suggest you go to “Horyu-ji i center” conveniently located on the approach to the temple and try the second floor. I do not remember whether the English panels are in place or not. But please go there and take a look at how ancient carpenters exerted their wisdom to build these temple buildings 1300 years ago, claimed to be the oldest set of wooden buildings in the world.

Master carpenter NISHIOKA revived old carpentry tools, one of which was Yarigan-na (a kind of plane), which should be displayed there. These tools were necessary for the great Showa period restoration work of Horyu-ji that lasted quite a while, hampered by WWⅡ. But he had this luck of being able to engage in the restoration work through which he, at first hand, learned the ancient wisdom, how past restoration works were conducted, and the marvel of Hinoki or Japanese cypress which has supported this great temple buildings for such a long time.

Trees are alive even after being felled to become lumber. They continue to have their unique characters. Master carpenters know how to handle them. They know right trees in right places. In case of mature Hinoki, they become stronger for the first 200 years or so and then taking more than 1000 years their strength comes back to be the same when they were cut. That means the hinoki trees at Horyu-ji are as strong as they were felled 1300 years back.

The Shin-bashira (Heart PIllar) of the pagoda at Horyu-ji was erected in the oldest way. It stood from the shin-so stone buried under the ground, two to three meters deep from the podium on which the pagoda stands. But rather soon, there happened trouble. Due to humidity the bottom of the pillar became hollow and it had to be mended by stuffing the cavity with stones and sun-dried bricks.

Well before the restoration work in the Showa period in the 20th century, a very large cavity had been found and in secret researchers went in there entrusted by the temple. Now it’s an open secret. The tower sustained itself with that large hole at the bottom of the heart pillar for more than 1000 years. At the restoration work, the cavity was mended with concrete and now the heart pillar stands on the shin-so base stone on the podium.

See the long-extending eaves and how dimensions at the top story are reduced in half of the first.

To-ji temple in Kyoto

As I wrote in one of the past articles, so-rin spire is supported by Shin-bashira or Heart Pillar, standing right in the middle of the interior of Japanese wooden pagodas of traditional make. The pillar supports the spire, not the whole pagoda, and stands independently from the rest of the structure. The spire caps the upper end of the pillar.

The five storied pagodas are usually closed and you can only admire their exterior. You are not permitted to go in and climb up like the multi-floored Chinese counterparts.

But don’t despair. The one at To-ji temple is open to the public periodically. If you happen to be in Kyoto now, you are in good luck. It’s open now, up to March 21. It is also open from April 29 to May 25.

The interior space is rather small and limited but seeing the heart pillar and surrounding statues is special. At To-ji, the heart pillar symbolizes the Cosmic Buddha Dainichi, central deity of their sect called Shin-gon.

This pillar had to be shortened near the bottom by about 50 cm in less than 50 years after the pagoda was rebuilt in 1644, the fourth reconstruction after it was originally built at the end of the 9th century.

The pillar stands tall with its tree fibers in verticality, which sustains load better than installed sideways, and does not have to support vast weight, only the spire; hence it hardly shrinks or deforms after its installation. However the rest of the structure does shrink and deform over time. Skilled carpenters always took it into consideration while building the pagodas. It happened at To-ji sooner than expected due to complications, perhaps. The tower became shorter; whereas the heart pillar stood unchanged. See the bottom of the pillar. It is applied with a metal bandage.

There are four ways the heart pillars were erected. At To-ji, the pillar stands on the Shin-so stone laid out on the podium for the pagoda. This is the second oldest way.

The example of the oldest way remains at Horyu-ji temple, though not in the perfectly original state. The article about Horyu-ji and the other two ways of erecting the heart pillar will follow later.

Here's a web page from the official web site of To-ji. Try scrolling down to the end of this page, and you can see the interior image of their five storied pagoda.

Message from Hiroshima

                                                        photo courtesy of arch-hiroshima

"An Unrecognized Loss - Message from Hiroshima" showcases images of life in Hiroshima before it was bombed. The film is about the day-to-day life and culture of Hiroshima, a side of the tragedy that has never been addressed in such detail. It was created by the Hiroshima Reconstruction Project, which is committed to spreading the non-nuclear message through a powerful story-telling technique that uses the latest, digital image technology. Its theme is the enormity of loss caused by the Atomic Bomb.

The above is the description from the web site of UNODA, United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. The site generously offers you a chance to get to see Hiroshima before the destruction.
*The web site might not be reached directly, which happened to me more than once. In that case, please type  "An Unrecognized Loss - Message from Hiroshima in the "search" window on that page.

At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, the first A-bomb ever used in human history exploded about 600 meters above the city. Below the mushroom cloud, people were in agony and their habitat ceased to exist.

Ground Zero has been transformed into Peace Park, where tourists, students, ordinary citizens and their pets walk. Monuments stand quietly and trees and plants please our eyes every season.

But we tend to forget that it used to be a lively neighborhood consisting of several towns, where people lived, did business, went to see the movies, and dined out. These towns should not slip our memory.

The picture posted this time is courtesy of arch-hiroshima, a web site for which I translate articles from Japanese to English. Webmaster Makoto is an interesting young man who was born and raised near the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and now works in Tokyo.

The pilotis of the Peace Memorial Museum designed by TANGE Kenzo beautifully serves as a gateway to Peace Park. Through it, you see the Cenotaph for the A-bomb victims. The axis conceived of on the ground extending perpendicularly from Peace Boulevard toward the A-bomb Dome is unobstructed this way. Through the Cenotaph, you see the A-bomb Dome, former Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall.

The park, I believe, is a masterpiece done by TANGE, who spent happy high school days in Hiroshima away from home in Imabari, Ehime on the island of Shikoku. His passion and attachment to the city must have led him through the Peace Center project when he was in charge of it as an architect.

The area was a bustling neighborhood, which fatally metamorphorsed into a dismal graveyard before becoming the park. That should we remember.

So-rin on the roof of Daigo-ji's pagoda

Here’s a close-up picture of the spire called so-rin. This part of the tower, not the whole tower, is the one that evolved from stupa, a hemispherical mound built in ancient India around the 3rd century B.C. to inter and venerate the ashes of Shiddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, who lived in the 5th century B.C.

The five storied pagodas in Japan, therefore, must have been originally built to enshrine the Buddha’s ashes or relics as an object of worship. Overtime, the significance of the pagodas as well as their location on the premises has changed - first in the center of the temple but later where it stands out well as a symbol and landmark of the temple - though they remain as one of the indispensable structures for many temples.

Well-surviving examples of early stupa are found at Sanchi, India. Sanchi is the oldest extant Buddhist sanctuary. Stupa 1, especially, has been preserved well. Its mound is topped with a parasol-like structure which is said to have intended to honor and shelter the ashes or relics of the Buddha. It is famed for its rich decorative work on the four monumental gateways called torana that provide access.

For more about Buddhist monuments at Sanchi which include Stupa 1, visit UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention site.

This web site shows a CAD image of the so-rin at Horyu-ji temple. The one at Horyu-ji’s pagpda alone has four scythes attached on it. It’s a bit of a mystery and nobody knows exactly why. Many say it must be a kind of charm against lightning; others insist it hopes for good harvest.