Rakan-ji Temple

Overview

Rakan-ji (羅漢寺, らかんじ, Rakan-ji) is a Buddhist temple of the Sōtō sect (曹洞宗, そうとうしゅう, Sōtō-shū) in Nakatsu, a city on the northern coast of Ōita Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. The temple is dedicated to Shakyamuni Tathāgata, the historical Buddha. It was established in 1337, in the second year of the Engen era (延元, えんげん), during the Muromachi period (1336–1573). Its name comes from the Five Hundred Arhats, the enlightened disciples of the Buddha in Buddhist tradition.

The temple's defining feature is its setting. It stands on the mountainside of Mt. Rakan, whose rocky cliff is pierced by countless cave mouths. The main gate and the main hall are built directly into the cliff face, and the caves hold more than 3,700 stone Buddhas.

History

Rakan-ji was founded in 1337. That date places its establishment in the first years of the Muromachi period, the era that began in 1336 and ran to 1573, when Japan was governed by the Ashikaga shoguns from Kyoto. The founding fell in Engen 2, the second year of an era name that was in use at the very start of that period.

The temple survived for six centuries before fire destroyed it in 1943. The present main hall was reconstructed in 1969, a quarter of a century after the loss of the earlier buildings. The stone Buddhas enshrined in the caves are the element of the site that predates the modern reconstruction.

What Stands There Today

The rebuilt main hall of 1969 sits in the same position as its predecessor, set into the rocky cliff of Mt. Rakan. The main gate, too, stands directly in the cliff, so that the boundary between built structure and natural rock is not a line but an interlocking of the two. The cliff itself is riddled with cave mouths, and these openings serve as the shrine spaces of the temple.

Inside the caves are more than 3,700 stone Buddhas. The number is what gives the site its character: this is not a hall containing a handful of images but a mountainside densely filled with carved figures, accumulated in the rock over the temple's long history. The figures are the reason the temple is named for the Five Hundred Arhats, and they remain the centre of what a visitor comes to see.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 羅漢寺. It is read らかんじ in kana, and rendered in romaji as Rakan-ji.

The name breaks into three characters:

羅 — read ra in this word. The character originally denotes a kind of light gauze or net, and it carries the sense of spreading out or gathering in. In Buddhist transcription it is used purely for its sound, with no reference to cloth.

漢 — read kan in this word. It means "Han," the Chinese dynasty and, by extension, China and things Chinese. Here, as with the first character, the meaning is set aside and the character is used for its sound.

寺 — read ji in this word. This is the ordinary Japanese character for a Buddhist temple, and it is the element that tells the reader what kind of place Rakan-ji is. It appears in temple names across Japan, usually as the final element.

The first two characters together, 羅漢, are the Japanese transcription of the Sanskrit word arhat — in Japanese, rakan. An arhat is one who has reached enlightenment and is no longer subject to rebirth. The tradition of the Five Hundred Arhats holds that five hundred such figures assembled after the Buddha's death to collect and preserve his teachings. The temple's name therefore means, plainly, "Temple of the Arhats," and the thousands of stone figures in its caves give the name its literal form.

Visiting and Context

Rakan-ji is in Nakatsu, in Ōita Prefecture, on Kyushu. Its position on the mountainside of Mt. Rakan places it above the surrounding country, with the cliff and its caves as the structure of the site rather than as a backdrop to it.

For readers of Japanese, the name repays attention. 羅漢寺 looks forbidding at first glance, but two of its three characters are sound borrowings from Sanskrit by way of Chinese, and only the last carries its own meaning. Recognising 寺 as the temple character, and knowing that 羅漢 renders rakan, turns an opaque three-character name into a description: a temple of the arhats, cut into a cliff, filled with their stone images.