Dōjō-ji Temple

Overview

Dōjō-ji (道成寺, どうじょうじ, Dōjō-ji) is a Buddhist temple of the Tendai school in Hidakagawa, a town in Wakayama Prefecture on the Kii Peninsula of western Japan. It stands at coordinates 33.9144920, 135.1745440, in the mountains south of the prefectural capital, Wakayama.

The temple was founded in 701, the first year of the Taihō era (大宝), which places its origins in the Asuka period (538–710), the final stretch of the era before the imperial capital moved to Nara. It belongs to three pilgrimage circuits: the New Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, the Tōkai-Kinki Jizō Reijō, and the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi.

Dōjō-ji is best known today for the Noh play that carries its name. The temple holds several statues designated National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties, along with buildings carrying the Important Cultural Property designation, and in 2013 its precincts were designated a National Historic Site.

History

The temple's founding date of 701 falls in the Taihō era, a period of major state reform in Japan. The Taihō Code, promulgated in that same era, reorganised the government along Chinese lines and strengthened the imperial state's control over the provinces. Buddhist institutions founded in this period were often tied to that project of centralisation, and Dōjō-ji's establishment in the mountains of what is now Wakayama Prefecture reflects the spread of state-sponsored Buddhism beyond the capital region.

Over the following centuries the temple became associated with the Tendai school, the tradition that grew out of the monastery on Mount Hiei near Kyoto and came to dominate much of Japanese Buddhist life in the Heian period and after. Dōjō-ji's later fame, however, came not from doctrine but from literature.

The temple gave its name to a body of plays, most famously the Noh drama Dōjōji. The story concerns a woman who transforms into a serpent and pursues a monk to the temple, where he hides beneath a large bell; the serpent coils around the bell and burns him alive. The play is one of the most frequently performed works in the Noh repertoire, and its climax turns on the bell, which is a real object of veneration at the temple. The temple's own version of the legend is preserved in the Dōjō-ji Engi Emaki, an illustrated handscroll recounting the temple's origins that the temple owns and that is counted among its cultural properties.

What Stands There Today

The temple's holdings include a group of statues and structures designated as National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties. Among the statues are the Dōjō-ji Nikkō Gekkō Bosatsu Ryūzō, standing images of the bodhisattvas Nikkō and Gekkō, and the Dōjō-ji Senju Kannon Ryūzō, a standing image of the thousand-armed Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. Both are owned by the temple and carry the National Treasure or Important Cultural Property designation.

The temple also owns the Dōjō-ji Engi Emaki, the illustrated handscroll of its founding legends. Several of the temple's buildings are designated Important Cultural Properties. In 2013 the precincts as a whole were designated a National Historic Site, recognising the temple grounds themselves as a protected cultural landscape.

The temple's membership in the New Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, the Tōkai-Kinki Jizō Reijō, and the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi reflects its role as a stop on established pilgrimage routes. The New Saigoku circuit is a Kannon pilgrimage covering thirty-three temples in the Kansai region; the Tōkai-Kinki Jizō Reijō is a circuit dedicated to Jizō, the bodhisattva associated with the protection of travellers and children; and the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi is a route linking sites associated with the historical blending of Shintō and Buddhist practice.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 道成寺. In kana it is read どうじょうじ, and in romaji it is Dōjō-ji. The macrons over the two ō mark long vowels, so each is held roughly twice as long as a short o.

The name breaks down into three characters:

• 道 — read here as dō. The character means "way", "road", or "path", and by extension "the Way" in the sense of a body of teaching or practice. It is the same character used in shodō (書道, calligraphy) and kendō (剣道, the way of the sword), and in Buddhist contexts it often carries the sense of the path to enlightenment.
• 成 — read here as jō. The character means "to become", "to accomplish", or "to complete". It appears in words such as seikō (成功, success) and kansei (完成, completion).
• 寺 — read here as ji. The character means "temple" and is the standard suffix for Buddhist temple names in Japan. It appears in otera (お寺), the everyday word for a Buddhist temple.

Read together, 道成寺 can be understood as "the temple where the Way is accomplished" or "the temple of the fulfilment of the Way". The reading Dōjō-ji combines the two Sino-Japanese readings dō and jō with the temple suffix ji. Note that the name is not related to the Japanese word dōjō (道場), meaning a training hall, though the two share the character 道 and are sometimes confused by learners.

Visiting and Context

Dōjō-ji sits in Hidakagawa, Wakayama Prefecture, in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula. The area is reached from Wakayama city and from the wider Kansai region, and the temple is one of the principal cultural sites of the prefecture.

For students of Japanese, the temple is a useful case study in how place names work. The name 道成寺 shows the standard pattern for Buddhist temple names: two characters of meaning followed by the suffix 寺, read with Sino-Japanese pronunciations. Recognising this pattern makes it easier to read the names of the many temples that appear in Japanese literature and history.

The temple is also a reminder that Japanese cultural landmarks often carry two histories at once — the institutional history of a religious foundation dating to 701, and the literary history of the legends and plays that grew up around it. The Noh play Dōjōji has kept the temple's name in circulation for centuries, and the temple's own handscroll, the Dōjō-ji Engi Emaki, preserves the version of the story that the temple itself tells.