Nanzen-ji Temple

Overview

Nanzen-ji (南禅寺) is a Zen Buddhist temple in Sakyō-ku, Kyoto, and the head temple of the Nanzen-ji branch of Rinzai Zen. Emperor Kameyama founded it in 1291, on the grounds of a detached palace he had previously used. It belongs to the Kyoto Gozan (京都五山), the "Five Mountains of Kyoto," the ranking of Rinzai Zen temples that the ruling warrior government sponsored and supervised. Its precincts are a nationally designated Historic Site, and the gardens of its Hōjō are a designated Place of Scenic Beauty.

History

The temple was established in 1291, in year four of the Shōō era (正応), during the Kamakura period. Its founder was Emperor Kameyama, who converted his own detached palace into a Zen monastery. The temple was first known as Zenrin-ji (禅林寺).

Nanzen-ji's name derives from the Southern School of Zen, the tradition it was built to promote. Over the centuries it became the most powerful Zen temple in Kyoto, and it was incorporated into the Kyoto Gozan system as the ranking of the five great Rinzai temples took shape.

The temple was destroyed by fire in 1895. It was rebuilt in 1909, and the structures standing on the site today largely date from that reconstruction and later.

What Stands There Today

The precincts contain several sub-temples, among them Konchi-in, Nanzen-in, Tenju-an, and the Nanzen-ji Hōjō. The Hōjō (方丈) is the abbot's quarters, the main residential and ceremonial building of a Zen monastery; at Nanzen-ji its gardens are the designated Place of Scenic Beauty.

The temple also owns a documented imperial artefact: the 亀山天皇宸翰禅林寺御起願文案, Emperor Kameyama's own handwritten draft of his vow for the temple, a document in the emperor's hand.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 南禅寺. It is read in kana as なんぜんじ, and in romaji as Nanzenji — often written Nanzen-ji, with a hyphen marking the boundary between the temple name and the suffix.

Broken down character by character:

• 南 — read here as nan. The character means "south." On its own it is also read minami.
• 禅 — read here as zen. The character means "zen," specifically the meditation tradition of Zen Buddhism. It is the same zen that appears in the school's name.
• 寺 — read here as ji. The character means "temple" or "Buddhist monastery." It is the standard suffix attached to temple names across Japan.

So the whole name means, plainly, "South Zen Temple." The "south" is not a geographical direction on the map of Kyoto. It refers to the Southern School of Zen, the lineage the temple was founded to uphold, and the temple takes its name directly from that school. The earlier name, Zenrin-ji (禅林寺), shares the zen character but pairs it with 林, "grove" or "forest," giving "Zen Grove Temple."

Two readings are worth keeping straight. The characters 南禅寺 are read Nanzenji as one unbroken word. The suffix 寺 is read ji here, not tera, which is the other common reading of the same character in temple names. Both readings exist in Japanese place names; Nanzen-ji uses ji.

Visiting and Context

Nanzen-ji sits in Sakyō-ku, in the north-eastern part of Kyoto, at coordinates roughly 35.01° north, 135.79° east. The area is the same north-eastern district that holds many of Kyoto's most prominent temples, and Nanzen-ji anchors it as the head temple of its Rinzai branch.

The temple's historical reach extends beyond its own walls. Ashikaga Yoshiteru, the thirteenth Ashikaga shogun, is recorded in connection with Nanzen-ji as a place of birth. The site is also tied to the Battle of Higashi-iwakura, a clash fought in the temple's vicinity during the upheavals that ended the Tokugawa shogunate and restored imperial rule in the nineteenth century.

For a student of Japanese, Nanzen-ji is a useful name to know for three reasons. It is a working example of how temple names are built — a doctrinal word plus the suffix 寺. It shows the ji reading of that suffix, which recurs constantly in Kyoto temple names. And it belongs to the Kyoto Gozan, the "Five Mountains" ranking, a term that appears throughout Japanese historical writing and is worth recognising on sight.