Kiyomizu-dera Temple

Overview

Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺) is a Buddhist temple in the Higashiyama-ku ward of eastern Kyoto. It was founded in 778, during the Nara period (710–794), which makes it one of the relatively few temples in the city that predates the establishment of Heian-kyō, the imperial capital that became Kyoto. The temple's full name is Otowa-san Kiyomizu-dera (音羽山 清水寺), and it belongs to the Kita-Hosso sect of Japanese Buddhism.

Its central object of worship is a hibutsu (秘仏) — a statue kept permanently hidden from public view — of Jūichimen Kannon (十一面観音), the eleven-faced form of the bodhisattva Kannon. Kiyomizu-dera is counted as the sixteenth stop on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage (西国三十三所), a circuit of thirty-three temples across western Japan dedicated to Kannon. It is also registered as part of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995.

History

The temple was founded in 778, in the ninth year of the Hōki era (宝亀), the last decades of the Nara period. The site sits on the wooded slopes of Mount Otowa in Higashiyama, from which the temple takes its formal name.

Over its long history the temple has been subject to repeated reconstruction, expansion and renovation. The buildings visible today are the product of these successive campaigns rather than of the original eighth-century foundation. The temple's long association with Kannon worship placed it among the leading Kannon temples of Japan, alongside Ishiyama-dera in Ōtsu, Shiga, and Hase-dera in Sakurai, Nara.

Kiyomizu-dera is linked to a network of pilgrimage and religious associations. It forms part of the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, the Thirty-Three Sacred Sites of Luoyang Kannon, the Twenty-Fifth Reikyo of Dharan Shonin, and the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi, a pilgrimage route connecting Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Its name also lives on in Seisui-ji Temple, which was named after it.

What Stands There Today

The temple complex occupies a hillside site at Higashiyama-ku, centred on its Main Hall (本堂, hondō). The Main Hall is the temple's defining structure and the focus of its worship. The complex also contains the Jishu Shrine (地主神社), a Shinto shrine within the temple grounds — a physical reminder of the historical intertwining of Shinto and Buddhist practice in Japan.

Since 1995, Kiyomizu-dera has hosted the annual Kanji of the Year ceremony, held on 12 December, known as Kanji Day. At this event a single kanji character is chosen to represent the year just ending, and it is written out in large calligraphy at the temple.

The temple is one of the most heavily visited sites in Kyoto, drawing pilgrims and tourists throughout the year.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is written 清水寺. It is read in kana as きよみずでら, and in romaji as Kiyomizu-dera. The full formal name of the temple is 音羽山 清水寺, read おとわさん きよみずでら, Otowa-san Kiyomizu-dera.

Breaking the name down character by character:

• 清 — read here as kiyo. It means "pure" or "clear."
• 水 — read here as mizu. It means "water."
• 寺 — read here as dera. It means "temple" (a Buddhist temple, as opposed to a Shinto shrine).

The first two characters together, 清水, are read kiyomizu and mean "pure water" or "clear water." The final character, 寺, is the standard kanji for a Buddhist temple; it appears in temple names across Japan, such as Hase-dera (長谷寺) and Ishiyama-dera (石山寺). The compound 清水寺 therefore means "Pure Water Temple."

Two points are worth noting for learners. First, the reading of 寺 shifts depending on the name: it is tera in isolation, but often dera when attached to a preceding element, as here. Second, the reading kiyomizu is a native Japanese reading (kun'yomi) of the two characters, not the Sino-Japanese reading; the same characters would be read seisui in a Chinese-derived compound — which is exactly the reading preserved in the name Seisui-ji, the temple named after Kiyomizu-dera.

The temple's formal prefix, 音羽山 (Otowa-san), means "Mount Otowa," the hill on which the temple stands. In Japanese temple names, this kind of prefix is called a sangō (山号), a "mountain name," and it is conventional even for temples not literally located on a mountain.

Visiting and Context

Kiyomizu-dera sits in Higashiyama-ku in eastern Kyoto, at coordinates roughly 34.99° north, 135.79° east. It is the sixteenth of the thirty-three stops on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, a route that has drawn Kannon devotees for centuries.

For students of Japanese, the temple's name is a compact lesson in how kanji readings work: the same two characters, 清水, can be read kiyomizu or seisui depending on context, and the character 寺 changes from tera to dera when it follows another element. The temple also gives its name to the wider area and to the approach streets leading up the hill, so the word 清水 appears constantly on signs, maps and bus routes around eastern Kyoto.

Its inclusion in the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto places it within the same World Heritage listing as a group of other historic sites in the city, and its annual Kanji of the Year ceremony keeps the temple in the news each December.