Kuon-ji Temple

Overview

Kuon-ji (久遠寺) is a Buddhist temple in Minobu, in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. It belongs to the Nichiren school of Buddhism, a tradition that takes its name from the thirteenth-century monk Nichiren, and it serves as the head temple of Nichiren Shū, the largest of the denominations that trace their lineage to him. The temple sits on the slopes of Mount Minobu, a mountain in the southern Japanese Alps, and the whole complex is commonly called Minobu-san, "Mount Minobu," after the peak it occupies.

Its founding date places it squarely in the Kamakura period (1185 – 1333), the era when Nichiren lived and taught. Kuon-ji is also counted among the Kai 108 Pilgrimage Sites (甲斐百八霊場, Kai hyakuhachi reijō), a circuit of 108 sacred places in the old province of Kai — the territory that is now Yamanashi Prefecture.

History

Kuon-ji was established in 1274, in the eleventh year of the Bun'ei era (文永, Bun'ei). The founder was Nichiren himself, the monk whose teaching centred on the Lotus Sutra and on the chant Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō, and who had spent years in exile and confrontation with the Kamakura authorities before withdrawing to the mountains west of the capital.

The site Nichiren chose was Minobu, a remote valley in Kai province. A mountain retreat suited a teacher who had been repeatedly driven from the centres of power: it was far from Kamakura, defensible, and quiet enough for study and writing. Kuon-ji grew from that settlement into the institutional centre of the movement.

After Nichiren's death the school he founded fragmented into several branches, and Kuon-ji became the seat of one of the most important of them, Nichiren Shū. Over the following centuries the temple consolidated its position as the mother temple of that denomination, with subordinate temples across Japan acknowledging its authority.

What Stands There Today

Kuon-ji remains the head temple of Nichiren Shū. Its role is not only devotional: the temple functions as a seminary, training the priests of the denomination, and it draws pilgrims and visitors who come to see the buildings and the mountain setting.

The administrative centre of Nichiren Shū is elsewhere — at Ikegami Honmon-ji in Tokyo — so Kuon-ji's modern importance lies in its status as the founding temple and its work as a centre of education for the clergy. The two sites divide the roles of origin and administration between them.

The temple is one of the Kai 108 Pilgrimage Sites, and it owns a site known as Summer Mountain. Its position on Mount Minobu, at roughly 35.38° north and 138.42° east, places it in a steep forested landscape rather than on the flat land of a city, and the approach to the main halls involves climbing.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 久遠寺. It is read くおんじ in kana, and romanised as Kuon-ji.

The name breaks down into three characters:

• 久 — read く (ku) here. The character means "long" in the sense of duration, "far off," or "everlasting." It is the same 久 that appears in words for things that endure.
• 遠 — read おん (on) here. It means "distant," "far away," or "remote." On its own the character is usually read tōi, "far."
• 寺 — read じ (ji) here. This is the standard character for a Buddhist temple, and it appears in temple names all over Japan.

The first two characters together, 久遠, form the word kuon, meaning "eternity" or "everlasting." That word is not decorative. In Nichiren Buddhism, and in the Lotus Sutra on which it is based, kuon refers to the eternal nature of the Buddha's enlightenment — the idea that the Buddha did not attain awakening for the first time in a single historical lifetime, but has been enlightened since beginningless time. A temple named "Eternity Temple" is making a doctrinal statement, not just a poetic one.

Note that the reading of the middle character shifts inside the compound: 遠 is on in kuon, not en or tō. This kind of sound change is normal in Japanese compounds, and it is why the kana reading くおんじ cannot be predicted from the characters alone.

Visiting and Context

Minobu is in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo and south of Kōfu, the prefectural capital. The temple lies on Mount Minobu, and reaching the main halls means walking or taking the cable car up through the temple grounds, which are laid out along the mountainside rather than on a single flat plot.

For students of Japanese, Kuon-ji is a useful anchor for several pieces of vocabulary. The character 寺 (tera or ji) is the everyday word for a Buddhist temple and appears in hundreds of place names; learning to recognise it makes temple names legible at a glance. The word 久遠 (kuon, "eternity") is a literary term that turns up in Buddhist texts and in formal writing. And the name Minobu itself — 身延 — is worth knowing, since the temple and the mountain share it and locals refer to the temple simply as Minobu-san.

The temple's place in the wider tradition is worth holding on to as well. Nichiren Buddhism is one of the major streams of Japanese Buddhism, and it is unusual among Japanese schools for its exclusive focus on the Lotus Sutra and on the chant that Nichiren taught. Kuon-ji, founded by the man himself in 1274 and still the head temple of Nichiren Shū, is where that stream begins.