Myōhōshō-ji Temple

Overview

Myōhōshō-ji (妙法生寺) is a Buddhist temple in the town of Ōtaki, in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. It belongs to the Nichiren sect, the tradition founded by the thirteenth-century monk Nichiren. The temple stands deep in the Bōsō Hill Range, the low, wooded uplands that fill the centre of the Bōsō Peninsula, the landmass that forms Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo Bay. Its name was given in 1253, a date that places its founding in the Kamakura period (1185–1333), the era when Nichiren was beginning to teach and when the sect that bears his name took shape.

History

The temple was named in 1253, during the fifth year of the Kenchō era (建長, けんちょう), a period name used in Japan from 1249 to 1256. That year sits at the very start of Nichiren's public career: 1253 is the year he is traditionally said to have first proclaimed his teaching, and the naming of Myōhōshō-ji belongs to the same moment. The name the temple received is drawn from the opening line of the Lotus Sutra, the scripture that stands at the centre of Nichiren's Buddhism.

For centuries the temple stood in the interior of the Bōsō Peninsula, remote from the coastal towns and the roads that served them. By 1904 it had fallen into nearly complete ruin. The site was not abandoned permanently. Beginning in 1931, Nichiren Buddhists set about rebuilding the temple, a slow process carried out over the decades that followed.

What Stands There Today

The temple exists today as a Nichiren sect foundation in Ōtaki, rebuilt from the state of near-ruin it had reached by 1904. The rebuilding that began in 1931 was gradual rather than a single act of construction, and it is this twentieth-century work that gives the site its present form. It occupies its original ground in the Bōsō Hill Range, in the centre of the Bōsō Peninsula, surrounded by the hills that isolated it for much of its history.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 妙法生寺. It is read みょうほうしょうじ in kana, and rendered in romaji as Myōhōshō-ji. The name is four characters long, and each one carries its own meaning and reading.

妙 — read myō here. The character means "wonderful", "excellent", or "mysterious". It is the first element of the compound myōhō.

法 — read hō here. It means "law", "dharma", or "teaching". In Buddhist usage it most often renders the Sanskrit dharma, the teaching of the Buddha. Together, 妙法 (myōhō) means "wonderful law" or "wonderful teaching", and it is the standard Japanese rendering of Saddharma, the first word of the Lotus Sutra's title. The full sutra title in Japanese is 妙法蓮華経 (Myōhō Renge Kyō), "the Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law".

生 — read shō here. The character's basic sense is "life", "birth", or "to be born". In this name it follows myōhō directly, giving the sequence 妙法生.

寺 — read ji here. It means "temple", and it is the ordinary Japanese word for a Buddhist temple. It appears as the final element in the names of temples across the country.

The reading of the full name is not simply the sum of its parts. Japanese temple names are read as fixed units, and the sounds here run together: myō + hō + shō + ji becomes Myōhōshō-ji. The first three characters, 妙法生, form the temple's distinctive name, and the fourth, 寺, marks it as a temple. The opening 妙法 ties the name directly to the Lotus Sutra, which is why the temple's naming is described as a reference to the sutra's opening line.

Visiting and Context

Myōhōshō-ji lies in Ōtaki, a town in the interior of Chiba Prefecture, in the Bōsō Hill Range at the centre of the Bōsō Peninsula. The coordinates of the site are 35.1746111 north, 140.1668667 east. The setting is inland and hilly rather than coastal, and the temple's long isolation in these hills is part of its history: it is the kind of place that could fall into ruin and then be brought back by a community of believers over many years.

For readers of Japanese, the name repays attention. 寺 (ji) is one of the most common endings in Japanese temple names and appears everywhere from small local foundations to great national ones. 妙法 (myōhō) is a specifically Nichiren marker, since the phrase belongs to the Lotus Sutra that Nichiren placed at the centre of his teaching. A temple named 妙法生寺 therefore announces both its religious affiliation and its scriptural foundation in the first three characters of its name. The date 1253, the year the name was given, places it at the opening of the Nichiren tradition, in the Kamakura period, when new forms of Buddhism were taking shape across Japan.