Murō-ji Temple

Overview

Murō-ji (室生寺) is a Buddhist temple in Nara Prefecture, on the mountainside of Mount Murō. It belongs to the Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism. The temple was founded in 800, the nineteenth year of the Enryaku era (延暦, Enryaku), which places its origin at the very start of the Heian period (794–1185).

The temple sits in the Murō district of the city of Uda, in the mountainous country south-east of Nara. Its setting is part of its identity: Murō-ji is built into a wooded slope rather than laid out on a flat urban grid, and the buildings are reached by climbing stone steps through the trees.

Murō-ji is registered as part of several pilgrimage circuits. These include the En no Gyōja Reiseki Fudasho, a route of sites associated with the ascetic En no Gyōja; the 仏塔古寺十八尊 (Buttō Kōji Jūhasson), a circuit of eighteen old temples with pagodas; the 49 Sacred Sites of Saigoku Yakushi, dedicated to the medicine Buddha Yakushi; the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi, a route linking sites of combined Shinto and Buddhist worship; and the Yamato Northern 88 Sacred Sites.

History

Murō-ji was founded in 800, at the opening of the Heian period. The temple's traditional association is with the worship of Zennyo Ryūō (善女龍王), a dragon deity connected with prayers for rain. Mount Murō itself was regarded as a rain-making mountain, and the temple served as a place where those prayers were offered.

The temple's five-storied pagoda dates to the ninth century, making it one of the oldest standing pagodas in Japan. That single fact carries much of Murō-ji's historical weight: while many of the great temple complexes of Nara and Kyoto were repeatedly destroyed by war and fire over the centuries, this pagoda survived.

Murō-ji belongs to the Shingon school, the form of esoteric Buddhism established in Japan by Kūkai in the early ninth century. The temple's foundation date of 800 places it in the same generation as the spread of Shingon, and its mountain setting fits the pattern of esoteric practice, which favoured remote sites for ritual and training.

What Stands There Today

Three structures are recorded as the temple's principal components.

The Golden Hall (金堂, kondō) is the main hall for the worship of Buddhist images. In a temple layout, the kondō is typically the building where the central objects of veneration are enshrined.

The Main Hall (本堂, hondō) is the hall dedicated to the temple's principal deity. At Murō-ji the Main Hall is historically associated with Zennyo Ryūō, the dragon deity of rain prayers.

The Five-storied Pagoda (五重塔, gojū-no-tō) is the structure for which Murō-ji is best known. Built in the ninth century, it is among the oldest pagodas still standing in Japan. A five-storied pagoda is a tower of five stacked roofs, each storey representing one of the five elements in Buddhist cosmology.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 室生寺. It is read むろうじ in kana, and romanised as Murō-ji. The long ō in Murō is a long vowel: the name has three morae, mu-ro-u, and the final じ is voiced, so the whole word is pronounced something like "moo-roh-ji".

Broken down character by character:

室 — read むろ (muro) in this name. The character means "room" or "chamber". On its own it is a common everyday kanji, as in 教室 (kyōshitsu), "classroom". Here it is not being used in its ordinary sense; it forms the first part of the place name Murō.

生 — read う (u) in this name. This is one of the most heavily used kanji in Japanese, with a wide range of readings and meanings: "life", "birth", "raw", "to be born", "to grow". In 室生 it supplies the final element of the place name. The combination 室生 is a proper noun — the name of the mountain and the district — and its reading むろう cannot be predicted from the individual characters. Place names in Japan frequently work this way, and 室生 is a good example to remember.

寺 — read じ (ji) in this name. The character means "temple". It is the standard suffix for a Buddhist temple in Japanese, and it appears in the names of temples across the country: 清水寺 (Kiyomizu-dera), 東大寺 (Tōdai-ji), 金閣寺 (Kinkaku-ji). Note that the reading shifts between じ and でら (dera) depending on the name; 室生寺 takes じ.

So the name as a whole means, roughly, "the temple at Murō" — 室生 naming the place, and 寺 marking it as a Buddhist temple.

Visiting and Context

Murō-ji stands at coordinates 34.5378861, 136.0406167, on Mount Murō in the city of Uda, Nara Prefecture. It is reached from the Nara area by train and then by bus into the Murō valley, followed by a walk up to the temple grounds.

For readers studying Japanese, Murō-ji is useful for three reasons. First, it is a clean illustration of how Japanese place names work: 室生 is read むろう, a reading that must simply be learned, while 寺 is a transparent suffix meaning "temple". Second, it introduces the vocabulary of temple architecture — 金堂 (kondō), 本堂 (hondō), 五重塔 (gojū-no-tō) — that recurs at almost every Buddhist site in Japan. Third, its foundation in 800 and its ninth-century pagoda anchor it firmly in the Heian period, the era in which Japanese Buddhism took the esoteric form that Murō-ji still represents.