Chūson-ji Temple

Overview

Chūson-ji (中尊寺) is a Buddhist temple in the town of Hiraizumi, in southern Iwate Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of northern Honshu. It is the head temple of the Tendai sect in Tōhoku. The temple stands on a hillside at coordinates 39.0013889, 141.0997222, within a landscape of halls, gardens and archaeological remains that together form the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Hiraizumi – Temples, Gardens and Archaeological Sites Representing the Buddhist Pure Land".

Chūson-ji is a complex rather than a single building. Its registered components include the Konjiki-dō (formerly called Ōi-dō), the Kyōzō, the Daichōju-in, the Sanko-zō, the Jizō-in, the Shaka-dō, the Yakushi-dō, the Mine Yakushi-dō, the Benkeidō Hall, the Kanzan Tenmangū, the Hakusan Shrine and Tsukimi-zaka. The temple is also part of the Shiji Kairō, a covered corridor.

History

The temple's traditional founding date is 850, credited to Ennin, the third chief abbot of the Tendai sect. The date recorded for the temple as an entity, however, is 1105, in the second year of the Chōji era (長治), during the Heian period (794–1185). The historian George Sansom states that Chūson-ji was founded by Fujiwara no Kiyohira in 1095.

Chūson-ji was designated a Special Historic Site in 1979. In June 2011 it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the "Historic Monuments and Sites of Hiraizumi".

What Stands There Today

The Konjiki-dō, or "Golden Hall", is the best known structure on the site; it appears in the records under its former name, Ōi-dō. Around it stand the Kyōzō, a sutra repository, and the Daichōju-in. The Sanko-zō, the Jizō-in, the Shaka-dō and the Yakushi-dō form part of the same complex, as does the Mine Yakushi-dō further up the hill. The Benkeidō Hall and Tsukimi-zaka, a slope whose name means "moon-viewing hill", are also counted among the temple's parts.

Two shrines are registered within the complex: the Kanzan Tenmangū and the Hakusan Shrine. The Shiji Kairō, a covered corridor, is a structure of which Chūson-ji forms a part.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 中尊寺. It is read in kana as ちゅうそんじ, and in romaji as Chūson-ji.

The name breaks into three kanji plus a suffix:

• 中 — read chū here. It means "middle" or "centre".
• 尊 — read son here. It means "revered one" or "honoured one", and in Buddhist usage it refers to a Buddha or bodhisattva.
• 寺 — read ji here. It means "temple".

The middle element, 尊, is the key to the name. In Japanese Buddhist vocabulary a 本尊 (honzon) is the principal image of worship in a hall, and 中尊 (chūson) is the central figure of a group of images — the main deity flanked by attendants. A triad of a Buddha with two bodhisattvas is arranged around its 中尊. The temple name therefore describes a place built around a central, revered figure rather than naming a founder, a mountain or a location.

The reading じ for 寺 is one of the two common ways to read that character in temple names; the other is でら (dera), as in a name like 浅草寺, Sensō-ji's neighbour 浅草寺 aside, the pattern 〜寺 = 〜ji is standard for major named temples. Note also that 中 read as ちゅう is the everyday Sino-Japanese reading, familiar from words like 中央 (chūō, "centre") and 中止 (chūshi, "cancellation"). 尊 read as そん appears in 尊敬 (sonkei, "respect") and in the names of Buddhist figures.

Visiting and Context

Chūson-ji sits in Hiraizumi, in Iwate Prefecture, at the northern end of Honshu. It is the Tendai sect's head temple for the whole of Tōhoku, which gives it a standing beyond its own grounds: Tendai is one of the major schools of Japanese Buddhism, and its headquarters in the north is here rather than in Kyoto.

The temple's inclusion in the Hiraizumi World Heritage listing places it alongside the area's gardens and archaeological sites, which are presented as a representation of the Buddhist Pure Land. The listing dates to June 2011. Within Japan, the site has been a Special Historic Site since 1979.

For readers of Japanese, the name is worth remembering as a pattern: 中尊寺 shows how a temple name can encode a Buddhist idea — the central image of a triad — rather than a place or a person, and how the character 寺 behaves in names.