Kōsan-ji Temple

Overview

Kōsan-ji (耕三寺, こうさんじ, Kōsan-ji) is a Buddhist temple of the Hongan-ji school of Jōdo Shinshū (浄土真宗, Jōdo Shinshū, the "True Pure Land" school) on the island of Ikuchijima (生口島, Ikuchijima) in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. It was founded in 1936, the eleventh year of the Shōwa era (昭和, Shōwa), by the industrialist Kōzō Kanamoto, who later took the name Koso Kōsanji. The temple occupies a site of roughly fifty thousand square metres, and many of its buildings are modelled on famous historic temples and shrines from elsewhere in Japan. Its best-known feature is the Hill of Hope (未来心の丘, Miraishin no Oka), a landscaped monument built of some three thousand tons of Carrara marble.

History

Kōsan-ji is a twentieth-century foundation with a memorial purpose. Kōzō Kanamoto built it in 1936 in honour of his deceased mother. The temple belongs to the Shōwa period (1926–1989), and its creation reflects the wealth and ambition of a modern industrialist rather than the patronage of an earlier religious order.

Kanamoto later adopted the name Koso Kōsanji, the name by which the founder is generally known in connection with the temple. The institution he established grew into a large complex on Ikuchijima, an island in the Seto Inland Sea, within the present-day city of Onomichi.

What Stands There Today

The temple grounds extend over approximately fifty thousand square metres. Many of the structures within them are modelled upon the country's most famous historic temples and shrines, so that the site brings together, in one place, architectural forms associated with widely separated locations across Japan.

The Hill of Hope (未来心の丘, Miraishin no Oka) is a monument landscaped with five thousand square metres of Carrara marble, weighing some three thousand tons, created by the sculptor Kazuto Kuetani. The Kōsan-ji Museum houses over two thousand items, among them nineteen Important Cultural Properties (重要文化財, jūyō bunkazai).

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 耕三寺. Its kana reading is こうさんじ, and its romaji is Kōsan-ji.

The name breaks down into three characters:

• 耕 — read こう (kō) in this word. The character means "to cultivate" or "to plough," and it is the first element of the founder's personal name, Kōzō.
• 三 — read さん (san) here. This is the basic numeral "three." It is the second element of the founder's name.
• 寺 — read じ (ji) in this word. It means "temple," and it is the standard suffix for a Buddhist temple's name in Japanese.

The first two characters together, 耕三, spell the founder's given name, Kōzō (こうぞう). The name of the temple is therefore built directly from the founder's name plus the character for "temple": the "Kōzō Temple." This is why the reading of the middle character shifts from the zō of the personal name to san in the temple's name, and why the final character, 寺, is voiced as ji rather than tera — a common sound change when 寺 follows another element in a temple name.

A note on the reading of the first character: 耕 is more familiar to learners from everyday words such as 耕す (たがやす, tagayasu, "to till"), where it is read taga. In names it is frequently read kō, as it is here.

Visiting and Context

Kōsan-ji stands on Ikuchijima, part of the municipality of Onomichi in Hiroshima Prefecture, at coordinates 34.3033333, 133.0905556. The island setting places the temple within the Seto Inland Sea, the body of water separating Honshū from Shikoku, and within the wider Onomichi area, long associated with temple routes and coastal travel.

For students of Japanese, the temple offers a compact vocabulary lesson in how Buddhist institution names are formed: a founder's name, a numeral embedded in that name, and the suffix 寺. The same suffix appears in countless temple names across the country, and recognising it — and its voiced form -ji — makes the names on any temple map easier to parse. The temple's modern date of foundation, 1936, also makes it a useful anchor for the Shōwa period: a religious site built not in the classical eras but in the twentieth century, by a named industrialist, for a named family member.