Nanshū-ji Temple

Overview

Nanshū-ji (南宗寺) is a Buddhist temple in Sakai-ku, the Sakai ward of Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture. It belongs to the Daitoku-ji branch of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen, one of the major lineages of Zen Buddhism in Japan. The temple's main image is a Shaka Sanzon, a triad centred on Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha.

Nanshū-ji is counted among the 33 pilgrimage sites of Izumi-saigoku, a circuit of temples in the old Izumi Province, which corresponds roughly to southern Osaka Prefecture. It is also the bodaiji — the family temple — of the Miyoshi clan, and serves the same role for many schools of the Japanese tea ceremony. Its garden, laid out by Furuta Oribe in 1619, is designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty.

History

Nanshū-ji was founded in 1557, in the third year of the Kōji era (弘治, kōji), during the Muromachi period. The Muromachi period ran from 1336 to 1573, so the temple's founding falls in its final decades, a time when Sakai was one of the wealthiest and most independent merchant cities in Japan.

The temple's association with the Miyoshi clan places it at the centre of the politics of that era. As the Miyoshi family's bodaiji, Nanshū-ji was the site of memorial services and graves for the clan, tying the temple's fortunes to one of the dominant warrior houses of the Kinai region.

The garden was laid out in 1619 by Furuta Oribe. Oribe was a tea master and daimyo whose name became attached to a distinctive style of tea ware; his garden at Nanshū-ji is the element of the temple that carries his name into the present. The garden is now a National Place of Scenic Beauty.

Within the temple complex stands Kaiji-ji (海会寺), a subordinate temple that forms part of Nanshū-ji.

What Stands There Today

The temple occupies its site in Sakai-ku at coordinates 34.5690190, 135.4684780, in the southern part of Osaka Prefecture. Its identity today is bound up with two things: Zen practice in the Rinzai lineage of Daitoku-ji, and the tea ceremony.

The garden laid out by Furuta Oribe in 1619 survives and is designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty, a category of protection applied to landscapes of particular aesthetic or historical value. The temple's role as bodaiji for many schools of the tea ceremony keeps it in active use by tea practitioners, and it is known for tea ceremonies held on its grounds.

Kaiji-ji, the subordinate temple within the complex, is one of the structures that make up the site as it stands now.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 南宗寺. It is read in kana as なんしゅうじ, and in romaji as Nanshū-ji. The macron over the final u of "Nanshū" marks a long vowel: the shu sound is held for two beats.

Breaking the name down character by character:

• 南 — read なん (nan) in this word. It means "south." It is the same character used in 南口 (minamiguchi), the south exit of a station, and in the name of the Nara temple Tōdai-ji's great south gate.
• 宗 — read しゅう (shū) in this word. It means "school," "sect," or "doctrine" — as in a religious lineage. The same character appears in 宗教 (shūkyō), "religion," and in the names of Buddhist schools such as 禅宗 (zenshū), the Zen school.
• 寺 — read じ (ji) in this word. It means "temple." This is the standard suffix for Buddhist temple names in Japan, and it appears in the names of thousands of temples, from 浅草寺 (Sensō-ji) in Tokyo to 東大寺 (Tōdai-ji) in Nara.

So the name as a whole means something like "South School Temple." The 南 (south) element is a directional marker common in temple names, and the 宗 (school) element reflects the temple's identity as a seat of a particular Buddhist lineage — here the Rinzai Zen line of Daitoku-ji.

Two notes on reading. First, 寺 is normally read てら (tera) when it stands alone as a common noun meaning "temple," but it shifts to じ (ji) when attached to a temple's name. Second, the long ū in しゅう is easy to miss: 南宗寺 is Nanshū-ji, not Nanshu-ji. The same long-vowel pattern appears in many Japanese words ending in -shū, such as 練習 (renshū), "practice."

Visiting and Context

Sakai-ku lies in the city of Sakai, south of central Osaka. The area is reachable from Osaka by rail, and the temple sits within the ward's historic core, near the merchant city that flourished in the Muromachi period.

For readers studying Japanese, Nanshū-ji offers a compact lesson in how temple names are built. The pattern is directional or doctrinal element plus 寺, read ji. Recognising 寺 on a sign tells a reader immediately that a Buddhist temple, not a Shinto shrine, lies ahead — Shinto sites use 神社 (jinja) or 大社 (taisha) instead.

The temple's two claims on a visitor's attention are its Zen lineage and its tea connections. The garden by Furuta Oribe, laid out in 1619 and protected as a National Place of Scenic Beauty, is the single most concrete thing to see. The designation of the temple as bodaiji for many tea schools means that tea practice, not only Zen practice, continues on the site.

Nanshū-ji also belongs to the 33 pilgrimage sites of Izumi-saigoku, a circuit that gives the temple a place in a wider devotional geography of the region. Pilgrims moving through the Izumi sites would arrive at Nanshū-ji as one stop among thirty-three, a route that links the temple to its neighbours across southern Osaka.