Oka-dera Temple

Overview

Oka-dera (岡寺, おかでら, Okadera) is a Buddhist temple in the Oka neighbourhood of Asuka, a village in Nara Prefecture, Japan. It was founded in 663, during the Asuka period (538–710), the era in which Buddhism took root in Japan and the earliest Japanese state took shape. The temple belongs to the Shingon-shū Buzan-ha (真言宗豊山派), a major school of Japanese esoteric Buddhism, and its honzon (本尊, ほんぞん) — the principal image enshrined in the main hall — is a clay statue of Nyōirin Kannon Bosatsu (如意輪観音菩薩, にょいりんかんのんぼさつ), the wish-fulfilling form of the bodhisattva of compassion.

Oka-dera is the seventh stop on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage (西国三十三所, さいごくさんじゅうさんしょ), a circuit of thirty-three temples across western and central Japan, each dedicated to Kannon. It is also the owner of the Seated Priest Gien (義淵僧正坐像, ぎえんそうじょうざぞう), a portrait sculpture of the monk Gien, the temple's traditional founder.

History

Oka-dera was founded in 663, the third year of the Hakuhō (白鳳, はくほう) era. That year falls in the Asuka period, when the Japanese court was still centred in the Asuka region and Buddhist institutions were being established on a large scale under imperial patronage.

The temple's traditional founder is the monk Gien, a leading figure in Japanese Buddhism of the seventh century. The temple keeps a seated portrait sculpture of him, the Seated Priest Gien, as a possession. Gien's disciples are traditionally said to have included some of the most influential monks of the following generation, and the temple's foundation is tied to his activity in the Asuka area.

What Stands There Today

The temple occupies a hillside site in Asuka at coordinates 34.4717890, 135.8283720, in the Oka district of the village. Its full name is Tōkō-zan Shinjūin-in Ryūgai-ji (東光山 真珠院 龍蓋寺, とうこうざん しんじゅいん りゅうがいじ), a formal temple name of the type used by Japanese Buddhist institutions, combining a mountain name, a cloister name and a temple name.

The honzon is a clay image of Nyōirin Kannon Bosatsu. Clay images of this size and age are rare in Japan, and the main hall that houses it is the focus of the temple's daily worship and of the pilgrimage traffic that arrives as the seventh station on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's common name is written 岡寺. It is read おかでら in kana, and rendered in romaji as Okadera.

Breaking it down character by character:

• 岡 — read おか (oka) in this word. It means "hill" or "ridge", a raised piece of ground. The temple sits on a hillside, and the surrounding district carries the same name.
• 寺 — read でら (dera) in this word. It means "Buddhist temple". The character is the standard written word for a temple, and it appears in temple names across Japan. Its reading shifts between てら (tera) and でら (dera) depending on the name it follows; here the initial consonant voices to で.

So 岡寺 means, plainly, "the temple on the hill" — a name taken from the place rather than from a doctrine or a patron.

The temple also carries a formal name, 東光山 真珠院 龍蓋寺 (とうこうざん しんじゅいん りゅうがいじ). In Japanese temple naming, the first element is the sangō (山号, さんごう), the "mountain name", here 東光山, "East Light Mountain". The second is the ingō (院号, いんごう), the cloister name, here 真珠院, "True Pearl Cloister". The third is the jigō (寺号, じごう), the actual temple name, here 龍蓋寺, "Dragon Cover Temple". The jigō is the name that appears in formal documents; the sangō and ingō are honorific layers that precede it.

Visiting and Context

Oka-dera stands in Asuka, the district south of Nara that served as the political heart of Japan in the Asuka period. The area is dense with early temple sites and burial mounds, and Oka-dera is one of its principal surviving religious foundations. For a reader of Japanese, the name is a useful piece of vocabulary: 岡 appears in many place names meaning a hill or upland, and 寺 is one of the first characters a learner meets, in words such as お寺 (otera, a temple) and 寺院 (jiin, a temple institution).

The temple's position as the seventh stop on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage places it within a route that has drawn pilgrims for centuries. Pilgrims on the circuit traditionally receive a red seal, the go-shuin (御朱印, ごしゅいん), at each temple they complete, and Oka-dera issues its own as the seventh station. The temple's honzon, Nyōirin Kannon, is one of the several forms of Kannon venerated across the thirty-three sites, each temple on the route associated with a different manifestation of the bodhisattva.

The Seated Priest Gien connects the site to the earliest stratum of Japanese Buddhist history, and the temple's foundation year of 663 places it among the religious institutions established while the Japanese court was still based in the Asuka region, before the capital moved to Nara in 710.