Eihei-ji Temple

Covered stairways climb a forested mountainside through more than seventy halls, gates and corridors, under cedars some 30 metres tall, as old as the temple itself. Eihei-ji, the "Temple of Eternal Peace", is one of the two head temples of Sōtō Zen, Japan's largest Zen school, and it remains above all a working monastery, where some two hundred monks and nuns in training follow a daily round that begins long before dawn.

The temple was founded by the monk Dōgen, who had travelled to Song China in his twenties, trained under the master Rujing at the Tiantong monastery and brought back the practice of shikantaza, "just sitting". After clashing with the established Tendai monasteries around Kyoto, he accepted the invitation of a samurai follower, Hatano Yoshishige, and moved to Yoshishige's lands in Echizen province in 1243. The following year he built a temple called Daibutsu-ji in these mountains, and in 1246 it was renamed Eihei-ji, after the era name of the Han emperor under whom Buddhism was said to have reached China. Dōgen's ashes and those of his successors rest in the Founder's Hall. The temple burned several times, notably in 1340 and 1473, and was attacked again in the late 16th century, so its oldest standing buildings date from a rebuilding in 1794. In 1615 the Tokugawa shogunate confirmed it as a head temple of equal rank with Sōji-ji.

The core of the complex follows the classic Zen monastery plan, with the main buildings linked by roofed corridors that rise in steps up the slope: the Sanmon gate, guarded by the Four Heavenly Kings; the Buddha Hall, with statues of the Buddhas of past, present and future; the Lecture Hall; the meditation hall, where each trainee eats, sleeps and sits on a single tatami mat; the kitchen; the bath; and the belfry, whose bronze bell was cast in 1327. Nineteen of the buildings are Important Cultural Properties, and the temple keeps a National Treasure in Dōgen's own hand, his 1233 manuscript of the Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen. Carpenters whose ancestors came from China at Dōgen's invitation settled in a village by the gate and served the temple for generations. Around the buildings, moss-covered boulders and Japanese maples fill the hillside, and the wooden floors have been worn smooth by centuries of daily cleaning.

Getting there

Eihei-ji stands in the town of Eiheiji, in the hills of Fukui Prefecture, about 15 km east of the city of Fukui. The nearest railway station is Eiheijiguchi, on the line from Fukui. The nearest airport is Komatsu (KMQ), about 38 km to the south-west.