Hōkoku-ji Temple

Overview

Hōkoku-ji (報国寺, ほうこくじ, Hōkoku-ji) is a Buddhist temple in Kamakura, a coastal city south of Tokyo in Kanagawa Prefecture. It belongs to the Kenchō-ji school of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, one of the major Zen lineages in Japan. The temple was founded in 1334, during the Kenmu Restoration period (1333–1336), and its grounds cover approximately 13,000 square metres (140,000 sq ft). It is counted as No. 10 on the Kamakura 33 Kannon pilgrimage, a circuit of thirty-three temples dedicated to Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, and it is also listed among the Thirteen Buddhist Sites of Kamakura. Within Kamakura it sits in the Jōmyōji district.

History

Hōkoku-ji was established in 1334, the first year of the Kemmu era (建武, けんむ), a brief period when Emperor Go-Daigo attempted to restore direct imperial rule after the collapse of the Kamakura shogunate. The temple's founding belongs to that unsettled moment, when new religious institutions were being planted across the Kantō region under the patronage of warriors and court figures alike.

The temple is sometimes called Takuma-dera, after the artist responsible for a statue of Kashyap, one of the Buddha's principal disciples. That statue stood in a hall adjacent to the main precinct and was destroyed by fire in 1891. The name preserves the memory of a work that no longer exists.

A statue of Shō Kan'non, the bodhisattva of compassion, is associated with the temple; the original is held at the Kamakura Museum of National Treasures rather than on site. The temple's principal image is a statue of Gautama Buddha, known in Japanese as Shaka Nyorai (釈迦如来, しゃかにょらい), enshrined in the sacred hall.

What Stands There Today

The feature for which Hōkoku-ji is best known is its bamboo garden, a stand of tall green bamboo that has earned the temple the popular nickname "Bamboo Temple." The garden draws visitors throughout the year, and the path through the grove is the image most often associated with the temple's name.

The sacred hall houses the principal image, the Shaka Nyorai. The temple's Shō Kan'non statue is not kept on the grounds; the original is on display at the Kamakura Museum of National Treasures, where it can be seen as part of the city's wider collection of Buddhist sculpture. The grounds extend over roughly 13,000 square metres, giving the temple a substantial precinct within the Jōmyōji area of Kamakura.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 報国寺. In kana it is ほうこくじ, and in romaji it is Hōkoku-ji. The name breaks down into three kanji plus the suffix 寺, which marks a Buddhist temple.

• 報 — read here as hō. It means "to report," "to repay," or "to requite." In compounds it often carries the sense of giving back something owed, as in repaying a debt or a kindness.
• 国 — read here as koku. It means "country," "province," or "land." Together, 報国 (hōkoku) means "repaying the country" or "requiting the nation" — a phrase with strong overtones of loyalty and service.
• 寺 — read here as ji. It means "temple." This is the standard kanji for a Buddhist temple and appears in the names of temples across Japan.

So the full name means something like "Temple of Repaying the Country." The reading ji for 寺 is the common one in temple names; the same character is read tera when it stands alone as a word. The macron in Hōkoku-ji marks a long vowel: the ō in Hō is held for two beats, not one, and the same applies to the ō in koku's first syllable as written in the romanisation.

Visiting and Context

Hōkoku-ji stands in the Jōmyōji district of Kamakura, at coordinates roughly 35.32° north, 139.57° east. Kamakura itself is a compact city of temples and shrines about an hour by train from central Tokyo, and it served as the seat of the Kamakura shogunate from the late twelfth century until 1333 — the year before Hōkoku-ji was founded. The temple therefore belongs to the first generation of institutions built after the shogunate's fall, in the short Kenmu Restoration that followed.

For a visitor, Hōkoku-ji is one stop within a dense network of religious sites. Its position as No. 10 on the Kamakura 33 Kannon pilgrimage places it on a route that has drawn pilgrims for centuries, and its listing among the Thirteen Buddhist Sites of Kamakura ties it to a second, smaller circuit. The bamboo garden is the principal attraction, and the temple is commonly known by the nickname "Bamboo Temple" in English-language guidebooks.

The temple's Zen affiliation — the Kenchō-ji school of the Rinzai sect — connects it to Kenchō-ji, the great Zen monastery of Kamakura, and to a tradition of meditation and monastic discipline that shaped much of the city's religious life. The principal image, Shaka Nyorai, is the historical Buddha, and the temple's dedication to Kannon links it to the broad devotional culture of compassion that runs through Japanese Buddhism. The Shō Kan'non original at the Kamakura Museum of National Treasures offers a chance to see the temple's sculptural heritage even when the work is not on the grounds.