Hyakusai-ji Temple

Overview

Hyakusai-ji (百済寺, ひゃくさいじ) is a Tendai Buddhist temple in the Hyakusaiji neighbourhood of Higashiōmi, a city in Shiga Prefecture, east of Lake Biwa. The Tendai school (天台宗, てんだいしゅう) is one of the major traditions of Japanese Buddhism, introduced from China in the ninth century and centred on Mount Hiei above Kyoto.

The temple is counted as one of the Kotō Sanzan (湖東三山, ことうさんざん), the "Three Great Temples of the Eastern Lake District," alongside Kongōrin-ji and Saimyō-ji. It also appears on several pilgrimage circuits: the Kōsei Saigoku Sanjūsankasho (近江西国三十三箇所), a thirty-three-site Kannon pilgrimage in the region; the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi (神仏霊場巡拝の道), a route linking Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples; and the Lake Biwa 108 Pilgrimage Sites. It is further listed among the Historical Sites of Prince Shōtoku (聖徳太子, しょうとくたいし), the early seventh-century prince traditionally credited with promoting Buddhism in Japan.

Hyakusai-ji was designated a National Historic Site in 2008.

History

The temple's founding is dated to 606, in the Asuka period (538–710), the era when Buddhism was still establishing itself in Japan after arriving from the Korean peninsula. The temple takes its name from Baekje (百済), one of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea, which maintained close diplomatic and cultural ties with the Japanese court and was a principal channel through which Buddhist texts, images and craftsmen reached Japan.

That connection places Hyakusai-ji within the same broad current of state-sponsored temple building that produced some of Japan's oldest religious foundations. The temple is associated with Prince Shōtoku, the regent and statesman who features in early Japanese chronicles as a leading patron of Buddhism; the Historical Sites of Prince Shōtoku grouping collects places tied to his memory and to the traditions that grew around him.

Through the medieval and early modern centuries the temple belonged to the Tendai school, whose headquarters on Mount Hiei lay to the west across the lake. Its position among the Kotō Sanzan gave it a recognised standing among the temples of the eastern lake district, and its inclusion on multiple pilgrimage routes kept it in the network of sites that lay travellers and pilgrims visited in sequence rather than in isolation.

What Stands There Today

Hyakusai-ji occupies a hillside setting in the Hyakusaiji district of Higashiōmi, at coordinates roughly 35.13° north, 136.29° east. The grounds are approached through wooded slopes, and the temple is known for the moss and maples of its precinct rather than for a single monumental structure.

The temple's status as a National Historic Site, granted in 2008, recognises the site as a whole — its layout, its surviving buildings and the archaeological traces of its long occupation — rather than any one hall. As a working Tendai temple it remains an active place of worship and a stop on the pilgrimage circuits listed above, and it is one of the three sites that together define the Kotō Sanzan.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 百済寺. It is read ひゃくさいじ in kana, and rendered in romaji as Hyakusai-ji.

The name breaks into three characters:

• 百 — read hyaku here; the character means "hundred." On its own it is one of the first numbers a student of Japanese learns.
• 済 — read sai here; the character carries senses of "to finish," "to settle," "to relieve" or "to ferry across." In Buddhist usage it often renders the idea of crossing over to salvation, and it appears in the names of many temples and in the word 救済 (きゅうさい), "relief" or "salvation."
• 寺 — read ji here; the character means "temple" and is the standard suffix for a Buddhist temple in Japanese. It appears in names across the country, from Sensō-ji in Tokyo to Tōdai-ji in Nara.

The first two characters together, 百済, are not read as a normal Japanese word in this context. They are the standard Japanese writing of Baekje, the ancient Korean kingdom, whose name in Korean is pronounced something like Paekche. The temple's name therefore means, in effect, "Baekje Temple" — a dedication to the kingdom whose monks, craftsmen and scholars were instrumental in transmitting Buddhism to Japan. The reading Hyakusai is the Japanised pronunciation of those two characters; the underlying reference is to Baekje, not to the number one hundred.

For learners, the useful point is that 寺 as a suffix shifts in reading depending on what precedes it — -ji in Hyakusai-ji, but -dera in names such as 石山寺 (いしやまでら, Ishiyama-dera). The -ji reading is the more common one in formal temple names.

Visiting and Context

Hyakusai-ji sits in Higashiōmi, Shiga Prefecture, in the countryside east of Lake Biwa. The area is reached from the lake's eastern shore, and the temple is one of the standard stops on any circuit of the Kotō Sanzan, which travellers typically visit together because the three temples lie within a short distance of one another.

The temple's appeal is seasonal and atmospheric: a hillside precinct, mature trees, and the quiet that comes with a site that is a pilgrimage destination rather than a major tourist attraction. Visitors following the Kōsei Saigoku Sanjūsankasho or the Lake Biwa 108 Pilgrimage Sites will encounter it as one station in a longer devotional route, which is how it has functioned for centuries.

For students of Japanese, Hyakusai-ji is a compact lesson in how the language absorbed and naturalised foreign material. A Korean kingdom's name, written with two Chinese characters and pronounced in a Japanese way, became the name of a Buddhist temple founded in 606 — and that name has stayed attached to the same hillside for well over a thousand years.