Myōhō–-ji Temple

Overview

Myōhō-ji (妙法寺, みょうほうじ) is a Buddhist temple of the Nichiren Shū (日蓮宗) sect, located in the Matsubagayatsu (松葉ヶ谷) district of Ōmachi, in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture. Its full name is Ryōgonzan Renge-in Myōhō-ji (楞厳山蓮華院妙法寺). The temple is dedicated to Sanbōson (三宝尊), the "Treasure of the Three Jewels" — the triad of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha that stands at the centre of Nichiren devotion. It was founded in 1253, during the Kamakura period (1185–1333), in the fifth year of the Kenchō (建長) era.

Myōhō-ji belongs to a group of three temples built near the spot in Matsubagayatsu where Nichiren (日蓮), the founder of the sect that carries his name, is said to have had his hut. The district name means "Valley of Pine Needles". The temple also has close ties with Prince Morinaga (護良親王) and with the Imperial House.

History

The temple's founding date of 1253 places it in the earliest phase of Nichiren Buddhism. Nichiren is said to have established his hut in Matsubagayatsu, and the three temples built near that site — of which Myōhō-ji is one — mark the ground associated with his early preaching in Kamakura. The year 1253 falls in the Kenchō era, the fifth year of that nengō (年号), the era-name system borrowed from China by which Japanese years were counted until the modern period.

The temple's later history is bound up with Prince Morinaga, a son of Emperor Go-Daigo (後醍醐天皇). Morinaga was a central figure in the imperial struggle against the Kamakura shogunate in the 1330s, and Myōhō-ji's connection with him and with the Imperial House has remained one of its defining characteristics. The temple's full name, Ryōgonzan Renge-in, belongs to this institutional identity: Ryōgonzan is its mountain name (山号, sangō), the honorific "mountain" title that most Japanese Buddhist temples carry, and Renge-in is its temple-hall name (院号, ingō).

What Stands There Today

Myōhō-ji stands in Matsubagayatsu, in the Ōmachi district of Kamakura, at coordinates 35.3129° N, 139.5591° E. The site lies among the wooded valleys that cut into the hills around Kamakura — the topography that gave Matsubagayatsu its name and that shaped the city's religious geography, since temples were built into the sheltered hollows between ridges. The temple is one of the three Nichiren sites clustered around the traditional location of Nichiren's hut, and it remains an active temple of the Nichiren Shū.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 妙法寺. Its kana reading is みょうほうじ, and its romaji is Myōhōji (often written Myōhō-ji to mark the morpheme boundary). The name breaks down into three kanji:

• 妙 — read みょう (myō) in this word. It means "wondrous", "marvellous", "exquisite" or "mysterious". It is the first character of the Lotus Sutra's Japanese title, and in Nichiren usage it carries the sense of the sutra's incomparable teaching.
• 法 — read ほう (hō) in this word. It means "law", "dharma", "teaching". Together with 妙 it forms the compound 妙法 (myōhō), "the Wondrous Law" — the Lotus Sutra (妙法蓮華経, Myōhō Renge Kyō), the central scripture of Nichiren Buddhism. The same two characters open the daimoku (題目), the chant Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (南無妙法蓮華経) that is the core practice of the Nichiren Shū.
• 寺 — read じ (ji) in this word. It means "temple". This is the standard suffix for a Buddhist temple's name, and it appears in countless Japanese temple names.

So the name means, roughly, "Temple of the Wondrous Law". The reading of 寺 shifts with the name it follows — じ (ji) here, as in many temple names, but でら (dera) in others — so the kana みょうほうじ is worth learning as a unit. Note also that 妙法 is not pronounced with the Sino-Japanese readings the characters carry in isolation (myō + hō is the same, but the compound is voiced and fused in speech), and that the long vowel in みょう and ほう is held: myō-hō-ji, three morae of roughly equal length, not "myo-ho-ji".

The temple's full name adds two more elements. 楞厳山 (Ryōgonzan) is the sangō, the "mountain name" that precedes the temple name in formal usage; 蓮華院 (Renge-in) is the ingō, the "hall name". 蓮華 (renge) means "lotus" — again pointing to the Lotus Sutra — and 院 (in) here means "cloister" or "hall".

Visiting and Context

Myōhō-ji sits in the Ōmachi area of Kamakura, within reach of the city's other Nichiren sites and of the broader circuit of Kamakura's temples and shrines. The Matsubagayatsu district is named for the pine needles that once carpeted the valley floor, and the temple's setting preserves something of the wooded, enclosed character that drew Nichiren's community to these hollows in the thirteenth century.

For readers studying Japanese, the name is a compact lesson in three things at once: the vocabulary of Japanese Buddhism (妙法, the Wondrous Law; 寺, temple), the reading conventions of temple names (寺 as じ), and the way Nichiren Buddhism is written into the landscape of Kamakura — a city where the sect's founding story, its founder's hut, and the temples built to mark it all share a single valley.