Jōruri-ji Temple

Overview

Jōruri-ji (浄瑠璃寺) is a Buddhist temple in Kyoto Prefecture, in the Kamo district of the city of Kizugawa. It was founded in 1047, year two of the Eishō era (永承, えいしょう), during the Heian period. The temple belongs to the Shingon Ritsu school, and it honours two principal deities rather than one: Amida Nyorai and Yakushi Nyorai. It is commonly called Kutai-ji (九体寺), "the temple of nine bodies," because nine statues of Amida Nyorai are enshrined in its main hall. In earlier times it was also known as Nishi-Odawara-dera (西小田原寺).

The temple's design is shaped throughout by Pure Land thought, the belief that devotion to Amida Buddha brings rebirth in a western paradise. Jōruri-ji preserves one of the few surviving Paradise Gardens of the early Heian period, laid out so that the visitor approaches the nine Amida statues across water and around a pagoda. The main hall, the three-storied pagoda, the nine seated Amida statues and a group of Four Heavenly Kings are all designated National Treasures.

History

Jōruri-ji was founded in 1047, in the middle of the Heian period, a span running from 794 to 1185. The Heian court had moved to Kyoto in 794, and by the eleventh century the aristocracy around the capital were building private temples and gardens that expressed their hopes for the afterlife. Jōruri-ji belongs to this world. Its nine Amida statues reflect a specific devotional practice: nine images standing for nine stages of rebirth in Amida's paradise, so that a dying believer could be guided through them in sequence.

The temple sits in the Kamo district, in the hills south of Kyoto, and it is counted among several pilgrimage circuits. It is a stop on the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi, a route linking sites associated with both Shinto and Buddhist worship. It also belongs to the Eighteen Ancient Pagoda Temples (仏塔古寺十八尊), the forty-nine sacred sites of Saigoku dedicated to Yakushi, and the Kansai Flower Temple circuit of twenty-five sacred sites. These memberships reflect the temple's double dedication to Amida and Yakushi, and its long life as a place of pilgrimage rather than only of private aristocratic devotion.

What Stands There Today

The main hall, the Jōruri-ji Temple Garden and the three-storied pagoda are the three named parts of the site. The garden is the element that gives the temple its place in architectural history: it is one of the few remaining Paradise Gardens of the early Heian period, a style in which buildings and water are arranged to evoke Amida's western paradise. The visitor moves through the grounds in a deliberate sequence, from the pagoda across the garden to the hall where the nine Amida statues wait.

The nine seated Amida Nyorai statues form a single group, and the Four Heavenly Kings form another. Both groups, together with the main hall and the pagoda, are designated National Treasures. The temple's honzon — its principal object of worship — is not one figure but two: Amida Nyorai and Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of healing.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 浄瑠璃寺. It is read in kana as じょうるりじ, and in romaji as Jōruri-ji.

The name breaks down into four characters:

• 浄 — read jō here. It means "pure" or "clean."
• 瑠 — read ru here. It is a character used mainly for its sound, and it appears in the Japanese word for lapis lazuli.
• 璃 — read ri here. Like 瑠, it is a sound-bearing character from the same word for lapis lazuli.
• 寺 — read ji here. It means "temple," and it appears at the end of temple names across Japan.

Together, 浄瑠璃 (じょうるり, jōruri) is the Japanese rendering of Vaiḍūrya, the Sanskrit name for lapis lazuli, and by extension for the pure, blue, jewelled light of a Buddha's realm. The temple is named after the Eastern Pure Land of Lapis Lazuli, 東方浄瑠璃世界 (とうほうじょうるりせかい, tōhō jōruri sekai), the paradise of Yakushi Nyorai, the healing Buddha. That naming explains the temple's double dedication: Yakushi presides over the eastern paradise of lapis lazuli, while Amida presides over the western paradise, and Jōruri-ji honours both.

The same word 浄瑠璃 also names a form of Japanese narrative music, jōruri, which grew up around the chanting of tales and later became the recitative of bunraku puppet theatre. The temple's name and the theatrical form share a root, not a meaning.

Visiting and Context

Jōruri-ji stands at coordinates 34.7161111, 135.8730556, in the Kamo area of Kizugawa, south of Kyoto. For readers of Japanese, the name is a useful case study in how Buddhist vocabulary entered the language. 寺 (じ, ji) is one of the most common endings for temple names, and recognising it lets a learner read signs across the country. 浄瑠璃 shows something else: how a Sanskrit word for a precious stone was carried into Japanese through Chinese, fixed in three characters used mostly for their sound, and then reused for a temple, a paradise and a style of music. The characters 瑠 and 璃 rarely carry their own meaning in modern Japanese outside compounds like this one, which makes Jōruri-ji a memorable example of sound-based kanji use.

The temple's setting in the Kamo hills places it among the historic temples of southern Kyoto Prefecture, an area reached from Kyoto by rail and road. Its garden, its pagoda and its nine Amida statues make it a reference point for the Pure Land imagination of the Heian period, and its place on the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi and the other pilgrimage circuits marks it as a site that worshippers have travelled to for centuries.