Jōei-ji Temple

Overview

Jōei-ji (常栄寺, じょうえいじ) is a Buddhist temple in the Miyanoshita neighbourhood of Yamaguchi, the capital city of Yamaguchi Prefecture in the San'yō region of western Honshu. It belongs to the Tōfuku-ji branch of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen, one of the major lineages of Zen Buddhism transmitted from China in the medieval period. Its principal image, the honzon (本尊, ほんぞん — the main object of worship enshrined in the temple's central hall), is a statue of Senju Kannon Bosatsu (千手観音菩薩, せんじゅかんのんぼさつ — the Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva of Compassion).

The temple is widely known by a second name, Sesshū-ji (雪舟寺, せっしゅうじ), after the painter and Zen monk Sesshū Tōyō (雪舟等楊, 1420–1506). The association rests on the temple garden, which tradition attributes to Sesshū. In 1926 the garden was designated both a National Historic Site and a National Place of Scenic Beauty.

History

Jōei-ji was founded in 1563, in the sixth year of the Eiroku era (永禄, えいろく) — a nengō (年号, ねんごう — era name) used between 1558 and 1570. The year falls in the closing decades of the Muromachi period, conventionally dated 1336 to 1573, so the temple was established within a generation of the period's end.

The temple is named after Mōri Takamoto (毛利隆元, 1523–1563), the eldest son and heir of Mōri Motonari (毛利元就, 1497–1571), the daimyō who built the Mōri family into the dominant power of the Chūgoku region. Takamoto died in 1563, the same year as the temple's founding, and the temple was established in connection with him. Yamaguchi was the Mōri family's base of power, which places the foundation directly within the political world of the Mōri house at its height.

The garden for which the temple is celebrated is attributed to Sesshū Tōyō, a native of the region who trained as a Zen monk and travelled to Ming China in the 1460s. Sesshū died in 1506, decades before the temple's foundation, so the garden's connection to him is a matter of attribution and tradition rather than documented authorship.

What Stands There Today

The temple occupies a site in Miyanoshita, in the city of Yamaguchi. Its defining feature is the garden associated with Sesshū, which in 1926 received two separate national protections: designation as a National Historic Site (史跡, しせき) and as a National Place of Scenic Beauty (名勝, めいしょう). The double designation recognises the garden both as an archaeological and historical site and as a work of landscape art.

The temple's honzon, a Senju Kannon Bosatsu, remains the focus of its religious function as a Rinzai Zen temple of the Tōfuku-ji branch. The Tōfuku-ji line takes its name from Tōfuku-ji in Kyoto, one of the great Zen monasteries of the medieval capital, and branch temples across Japan belong to its network.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 常栄寺. Its kana reading is じょうえいじ, and its romaji is Jōei-ji. The long vowel in the second syllable is written with a macron: Jōei, not Joei.

Broken down character by character:

• 常 — read here as じょう (jō). The character means "constant", "unchanging" or "everlasting". It is a common element in temple and place names.
• 栄 — read here as えい (ei). The character means "prosperity", "flourishing" or "glory". Combined with 常, the pair 常栄 conveys "everlasting prosperity" — an auspicious two-character phrase of the kind often chosen for temple names.
• 寺 — read here as じ (ji). The character means "temple" and is the standard suffix for a Buddhist temple's name. Note that it is voiced here: tera becomes ji in compounds.

The name is therefore a three-character compound: an auspicious phrase of two characters plus the temple suffix. The reading follows the on'yomi (音読み, おんよみ — the Sino-Japanese reading of a kanji) for all three characters, which is typical for temple names.

The temple's familiar name, Sesshū-ji (雪舟寺), is built the same way: the artist's name Sesshū plus 寺. 雪 (せつ, setsu) means "snow" and 舟 (しゅう, shū) means "boat" — the pen name Sesshū, "snow boat", is itself a small poem.

Visiting and Context

Jōei-ji sits in Yamaguchi city, in the San'yō region of western Honshu. The city is reachable by rail on the San'yō Shinkansen line and is the prefectural capital. The temple's neighbourhood, Miyanoshita, lies within the city.

Yamaguchi is one of the most rewarding places in Japan for a student of the medieval period. It was the seat of the Ōuchi family, who drew Kyoto's culture westward, and later the base of the Mōri. Sesshū himself was born in the region, and the area preserves a dense concentration of sites connected to him and to the Zen networks of the Muromachi period. A visit to Jōei-ji is best understood as part of that wider landscape: a small temple whose importance lies in a single garden and in the memory of two men — the painter whose name it carries and the Mōri heir whose death it commemorates.