Byōdō-in Temple

Interesting facts

The temple bell is counted among Japan's three most famous bells, celebrated specifically for the beauty of its shape and relief decoration.

Fifty-two carved Bodhisattvas on Clouds survive from the hall's walls, shown playing musical instruments and dancing around the Buddha.

The phoenix motif of the hall also appears on Japan's 10,000-yen banknote, alongside the hall's long presence on the 10-yen coin.

The hall faces east across the Aji-ike pond, so that the Pure Land it represents lies symbolically on the far side of the water.

The gilded Amida statue is about 2.8 metres high and sits with its hands in the lap, thumbs and forefingers forming circles in a meditation gesture.

The 1336 fire that destroyed most of the temple was set during fighting by the samurai commander Kusunoki Masashige against the Ashikaga.

Lotus seeds roughly 200 years old, found in excavated soil at the temple, were successfully sprouted and are now grown as the Byōdō-in lotus.

A great fire in Uji in 1698 badly damaged the temple, ruining walls and doors of the Phoenix Hall.

From 2012 to 2014 the hall was reroofed and its columns repainted in a major restoration.

A half-size concrete replica of the Phoenix Hall was completed in 1968 in the Valley of the Temples on Oʻahu, Hawaii.

Why it is worth it

Byōdō-in is the temple on the Japanese ten-yen coin, and the building on that coin, the Phoenix Hall, has stood beside its pond in Uji since 1053. It is almost the only surviving building of its kind from the age when the Fujiwara regents ruled the court, and it was conceived as nothing less than a picture of paradise on earth: a gilded hall floating on water, meant to show the Pure Land of the Buddha Amida to people who feared the world was ending.

The site began in 998 as the country villa of the courtier Minamoto no Shigenobu. The powerful Fujiwara no Michinaga bought it, and his son Yorimichi turned it into a temple in 1052, the year many believed the Latter Day of the Law, a long age of Buddhist decline, had begun. The hall was finished a year later. Its plan is a central hall with two L-shaped corridors spreading like wings and a corridor behind like a tail; together with the pair of phoenixes on the roof, this outline earned it the name Hōō-dō, Phoenix Hall, from the Edo period on. In 1336 fighting set fire to the temple and most of its buildings burned, but the hall survived. The temple is shared today by the Jōdo and Tendai schools, and it is part of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, listed by UNESCO in 1994.

Inside sits the gilded Amida by the sculptor Jōchō, carved around 1053 from Japanese cypress using the joined-wood technique he perfected, in which hollowed pieces are assembled from within. Around him on the walls hovers a host of small carved celestial figures on clouds, accompanying the Buddha down to collect the souls of the faithful, and the painted doors show his descent against landscapes of the Kyoto region, an early example of native Yamato-e painting.

The Hōshōkan museum, opened in 2001 and set largely underground so as not to compete with the hall, holds the originals of the rooftop phoenixes, the temple bell and 26 of the Bodhisattvas on Clouds, all National Treasures. Uji is famous for its green tea, and the temple's own tea room, Toka, serves tea from local fields within the precinct.

Getting there

Byōdō-in is in central Uji, south of Kyoto. It is about an 8-minute walk from Keihan Uji station, crossing the Uji Bridge, or about 10 minutes from JR Uji station. The nearest airport is Osaka Itami (ITM), about 36 km away.

Plan your visit

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Byōdō-in Temple

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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