Kōfuku-ji Temple

Overview

Kōfuku-ji (興福寺, こうふくじ, Kōfuku-ji) is a Buddhist temple in Nagasaki, on the island of Kyushu in southern Japan. It belongs to the Ōbaku school of Zen, a tradition with strong Chinese roots, and it was founded in 1624, the first year of the Kan'ei era (寛永, かんえい, Kan'ei), during the Edo period (1603–1868). The temple is recognised by the Japanese government as an important cultural asset.

Kōfuku-ji is one of the Three Chinese Temples in Nagasaki, a group of temples established by Chinese residents of the city. Its full name is Tōmeizan Kōfuku-ji (東明山興福寺, とうめいざんこうふくじ, Tōmeizan Kōfuku-ji), where Tōmeizan is the temple's mountain name, a formal prefix used in Zen naming conventions.

History

Kōfuku-ji was established in 1624 in Nagasaki. That year fell in the Kan'ei era, and the temple's founding places it early in the Edo period, a stretch of more than two and a half centuries of Tokugawa rule that began in 1603 and ended in 1868.

The temple belongs to the Ōbaku school of Zen. Ōbaku is the third major Zen lineage to take root in Japan, and it is distinguished by its Chinese character: its founders, its liturgy, and much of its architecture came from mainland China. Nagasaki was the natural home for such a temple. During the Edo period the city was Japan's principal window onto the outside world, and it hosted a substantial Chinese merchant community. That community built and supported temples in its own traditions, and Kōfuku-ji was one of them.

Kōfuku-ji is counted among the Three Chinese Temples in Nagasaki, alongside the other Chinese-founded temples of the city. The temple is designated by the government as an important cultural asset.

What Stands There Today

The temple's Mazu Hall, known in Japanese as the Masu-dō (マズ堂) or the Bodhisattva Hall, the Bosa-dō (ボサ堂), is among the very few places in Japan dedicated to Mazu. Mazu is a Chinese sea goddess, the deified form of Lin Moniang (林默孃), a shamaness from Fujian in medieval China. Seafarers and overseas communities across the Chinese world venerated her as a protector, and Chinese merchants abroad carried her worship with them.

For a port city whose Chinese residents depended on the sea, a hall to Mazu was a practical as well as a devotional institution. The presence of such a hall at Kōfuku-ji reflects the temple's origins in Nagasaki's Chinese merchant community and its role in preserving Chinese religious practice on Japanese soil.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name in Japanese is 興福寺. Its reading in kana is こうふくじ, and in romaji it is Kōfuku-ji. The macron over the first o marks a long vowel: the sound is held roughly twice as long as a short o.

Broken down character by character:

• 興 — read here as こう (kō). The character means "to rise up," "to flourish," or "to be aroused." In this name it carries the sense of something being raised up or prospering.
• 福 — read here as ふく (fuku). It means "fortune," "good luck," or "blessing." It is the same character found in the everyday word 福 (fuku, good fortune).
• 寺 — read here as じ (ji). It means "temple." This character appears in the names of Buddhist temples throughout Japan.

Put together, 興福寺 can be understood as "the temple where fortune is raised up" or "the temple of flourishing good fortune." The reading shifts slightly from the characters' standalone pronunciations, as is common in temple names: 寺 is normally read てら (tera) on its own, but becomes じ (ji) in compounds like this one.

The full name, Tōmeizan Kōfuku-ji, adds 東明山 (とうめいざん, Tōmeizan) in front. 東 means "east," 明 means "bright" or "clear," and 山 means "mountain." This is the temple's sangō (山号, さんごう, mountain name), a formal title that many Zen temples carry even when no mountain is nearby.

Visiting and Context

Kōfuku-ji stands in Nagasaki, at coordinates roughly 32.75 degrees north and 129.88 degrees east. It was founded in 1624 and remains an active temple of the Ōbaku school of Zen.

Its place in Nagasaki's religious landscape is defined by the city's Edo-period role as Japan's gateway to the wider world. The Chinese community that founded Kōfuku-ji also gave the city its other Chinese temples, and together these form the Three Chinese Temples in Nagasaki. The temple's Mazu Hall makes it a rare site in Japan for the worship of the Chinese sea goddess Mazu, a link to the Fujianese maritime culture from which many of Nagasaki's Chinese residents came.