Hongan-ji Temple

Overview

Hongan-ji (本願寺) is the collective name of the largest school of Jōdo Shinshū (浄土真宗), the "True Pure Land" branch of Japanese Buddhism. It is not a single building but a family of temple institutions that grew from one site in Kyoto into a nationwide movement, and it now exists as two separate head temples standing a few blocks apart in the same city: Nishi Hongan-ji (西本願寺), the Western Temple, and Higashi Hongan-ji (東本願寺), the Eastern Temple.

The school traces its foundation to 1321, in the Kamakura period (1185–1333), during the first year of the Genkō era (元亨). Its name is taken from the Primal Vow, the central vow of the Buddha Amida, and the institution is counted among the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto.

History

Jōdo Shinshū descends from the teaching of Shinran (親鸞), a monk of the early thirteenth century who taught that salvation comes through faith in Amida Buddha rather than through monastic discipline or accumulated merit. After Shinran's death his followers organised, and in 1321 a temple was established in Kyoto that would become the movement's institutional centre. The name chosen for it, Hongan-ji, pointed directly at the Primal Vow that anchored Shinran's teaching.

Over the following centuries the temple grew into one of the most powerful religious institutions in Japan, and its history is inseparable from its conflicts with secular authority. Its most famous leader, Rennyo (蓮如), led a major expansion of the school in the fifteenth century, and the community he built proved strong enough to resist the military campaigns of the warlord Oda Nobunaga (織田信長) for more than a decade at its fortress-temple at Ishiyama.

That resistance ended in the 1580s, and the school was subsequently split. The division produced the two branches that exist today, the Nishi and Higashi temples, each with its own head temple in Kyoto. The Western branch was established first; the Eastern branch was created as a separate institution in the early seventeenth century. From that point the two temples developed independently, and both remain active centres of the school.

What Stands There Today

Nishi Hongan-ji and Higashi Hongan-ji are both major temple complexes in Kyoto, and both are large enough to be destinations in their own right rather than single halls. They sit close to one another north of Kyoto Station, which makes it practical to see both in a single outing.

Nishi Hongan-ji is the older of the two and is the one inscribed within the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto. Higashi Hongan-ji stands to the east and is the head temple of the other branch. Each complex contains multiple halls and gates, and each functions as the administrative and devotional centre of its branch of Jōdo Shinshū.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 本願寺, read in kana as ほんがんじ. The romaji is Hongan-ji, and an older romanisation, Hongwan-ji, is still occasionally seen. The word is built from three kanji:

本 — read here as hon. Its base meaning is "book" or "origin," and in compounds it commonly means "main," "true," or "original." In this name it carries the sense of "primal" or "fundamental."

願 — read here as gan. It means "wish," "request," or "vow." Combined with the first character, 本願 (hongan) means "Primal Vow" — the vow attributed to Amida Buddha that stands at the centre of Jōdo Shinshū teaching. This is the concept the temple is named after.

寺 — read here as ji. This is the ordinary Japanese word for a Buddhist temple, and it appears at the end of temple names across the country. Note that its reading shifts to ji rather than the standalone tera when it follows another element in a compound.

The whole name therefore means "Temple of the Primal Vow." A phonetic detail worth knowing: the n in hon is pronounced closer to m before the g of gan, which is why the older romanisation wrote it as Hongwan-ji. Both spellings refer to the same name.

Visiting and Context

The two temples are in central Kyoto, north of Kyoto Station, and are close enough to each other to be visited on foot in one trip. Because the name Hongan-ji refers to the school and to more than one building, it is worth being specific when asking for directions or reading a map: Nishi Hongan-ji and Higashi Hongan-ji are distinct sites with distinct entrances.

For students of Japanese, the name is a compact lesson in how Buddhist vocabulary works in the language. 寺 (ji) is one of the most common suffixes in Japanese place names, and recognising it lets a reader identify a temple at a glance. 願 (gan) appears throughout religious and everyday language in words connected to wishes and requests. And 本 (hon) is one of the most productive characters in Japanese, appearing in words for "origin," "main," and "this" — so a name learned here pays off well beyond this one temple.