Daitoku-ji Temple

Overview

Daitoku-ji (大徳寺) is a Zen Buddhist temple in the Murasakino district of Kita-ku, Kyoto. It belongs to the Rinzai school of Zen, and its founding year is 1315, in the Kamakura period (1185–1333). The era name at the time of its establishment was Shōwa (正和), the fourth year of that era.

The temple complex is one of the largest Zen foundations in Kyoto. Its grounds hold the main temple buildings — among them a Buddha Hall and a lecture hall — together with more than twenty sub-temples. Daitoku-ji has produced many notable monks and has a long association with the tea ceremony, giving it an outsized influence on Japanese culture. Its buildings, gardens, sliding-screen paintings, tea utensils, and Chinese calligraphy and painting constitute a substantial body of cultural property.

History

Daitoku-ji was founded in 1315, during the Kamakura period. The temple was established at Murasakino in Kita-ku, the site it occupies today, at the coordinates 35.0438889, 135.7461111.

The temple's history includes destruction, and it was subsequently rebuilt and expanded. Over the centuries it grew into a large complex of main buildings and sub-temples, and it became closely tied to the tea ceremony and to the monks and lay patrons who practised it.

The temple holds a number of significant objects. Among them are a Guanyin, a portrait of the National Teacher Daitō (大燈国師像), a document written by Emperor Go-Daigo (後醍醐天皇宸翰御置文), a work titled Gibbons and Crane, and the Daruma-ki nenkō-go (達磨忌拈香語), a text associated with the memorial rite for Bodhidharma.

What Stands There Today

The Daitoku-ji complex covers more than 23 hectares (57 acres), making it one of the largest Zen temple grounds in Kyoto. It comprises the main temple complex, including the Buddha Hall and the lecture hall, and more than twenty sub-temples.

The named sub-temples and structures within the complex include Tenzui-ji, the Daitoku-ji Hōjō (大徳寺方丈), Ryōgen-in, Sōken-in, Ryūshō-ji, Daisen-in, Ryōkō-in, Kōrin-in, Zuihō-in, Kohō-an, the Daitoku-ji Karamon (大徳寺唐門), and Ōbai-in.

The main temple is not open to the public, and many of the sub-temples are also closed to visitors. The complex preserves buildings, gardens, sliding-screen paintings, tea ceremony utensils, and calligraphy and paintings from China.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 大徳寺. Its reading in kana is だいとくじ, and in romaji it is Daitoku-ji. The name is often rendered in English as "temple of Great Virtue".

Broken down character by character:

• 大 — read here as dai. It means "great" or "large". This is the same character found in words like 大学 (daigaku, university).
• 徳 — read here as toku. It means "virtue", "merit", or "moral excellence". The compound 大徳 (daitoku) therefore means "great virtue", a term also used as a title for a highly respected monk.
• 寺 — read here as ji. It means "temple". This character appears in the names of Buddhist temples across Japan, such as 清水寺 (Kiyomizu-dera) and 金閣寺 (Kinkaku-ji).

The reading of 寺 shifts between ji and dera depending on the name; at Daitoku-ji it is ji. The full name 大徳寺 thus combines a title of respect for a virtuous monk with the ordinary word for a temple. The temple also carries a sangō (山号), a honorific "mountain name" of the kind many Zen temples use: Ryūhōzan (龍宝山).

Visiting and Context

Daitoku-ji stands in Murasakino, in the Kita-ku ward of Kyoto. The main temple itself is not open to the public, and many of the sub-temples are likewise closed. Access is therefore generally to those sub-temples that do admit visitors, and to the grounds and approaches of the complex.

The temple's association with the tea ceremony is one of the reasons it occupies a prominent place in Japanese cultural history. Its sub-temples and their gardens, tea rooms, and painted sliding screens are counted among the cultural assets of the complex, alongside its Chinese calligraphy and paintings and its tea utensils.

For a reader of Japanese, Daitoku-ji is a useful name to know: it combines a common kanji for "great" (大), a virtue term (徳) that appears in personal names and in Buddhist vocabulary, and the standard temple character (寺). Recognising these three elements makes the name readable on sight, and the same three characters recur throughout Japanese place names and temple names.