Tōdai-ji Temple

Interesting facts

X-ray examination found a human tooth, pearls, mirrors, swords and jewels hidden inside the Great Buddha's knee, believed to be relics connected with Emperor Shōmu.

Until 1998 the Great Buddha Hall was the largest wooden building in the world.

The original complex had two pagodas of roughly 100 metres, among the tallest structures of their age; both were later destroyed, reportedly by an earthquake.

In 855 the Great Buddha's head suddenly fell to the ground, and donations were gathered across the empire to make a new one.

The statue is a patchwork of eras: its current hands were made in the Momoyama period and its head in the Edo period.

At the eye-opening ceremony in 752, attended by about 10,000 monks and 4,000 dancers, the Indian priest Bodhisena painted in the Buddha's eyes.

The Chinese monk Ganjin reached Japan after twelve years and six attempts to cross the sea, and in 754 he ordained Empress Kōken and the retired Emperor Shōmu here.

The 8.5-metre Nio guardians of the Great South Gate, carved by Unkei, Kaikei and their workshop, were moved from their niches for the first time in a 1988–1993 restoration.

The temple's own figures give the Buddha a face 5.33 metres long and ears of 2.54 metres.

During a 1974–1980 restoration the hall roof was removed entirely and refixed on steel frames, and its wooden pillars were reinforced with steel and concrete.

Why it is worth it

Emperor Shōmu ordered this temple built in 743, and it wasn't primarily an act of devotion for its own sake — Japan had just been through smallpox epidemics, famine, and a failed rebellion, and Shōmu's response was to commission a nationwide network of provincial temples with this one, in the capital, as the head of the entire system. A single enormous bronze Buddha at the centre of it was meant to function as something like a spiritual capstone holding the whole troubled country together.

Casting it took nine years and, by some estimates, the labour of over two and a half million people at a time when Japan's entire population was a small fraction of what it is now. The statue was built up in stages from the bottom, pouring roughly 500 tons of molten bronze in successive castings around a wooden and clay armature. Gilding the finished figure took a great deal of gold, and when gold was reported in northern Japan in 749, during the work, the court greeted the find as a sign of heaven’s approval.

The statue and its hall haven't survived intact. The hall burned during the Genpei War in 1180, when Taira clan forces torched the temple complex as part of a civil war, and a later fire in 1567, during a different round of civil conflict, left the Great Buddha exposed to the open sky for over a century before anyone rebuilt around it again. The hall standing today dates only to 1709, and was deliberately built at about two-thirds the footprint of the original — meaning the vast hall that still dwarfs most visitors is, on paper, the smaller replacement.

Getting there

3 km from Nara-shi. Osaka Itami International Airport (ITM) is about 38 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

Tōdai-ji is a Buddhist temple complex that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples, located in the city of Nara, Japan. The construction of the temple was an attempt to imitate Chinese temples from the much-admired Tang dynasty. Though it was originally founded in the year 738 CE, Tōdai-ji was not opened until the year 752 CE. The temple has undergone several reconstructions, including one initiated by Minamoto Yoritomo in 1181 which included the standardization of existing buildings and the strengthening of visible pillars. Since then, one of the most significant reconstruction took place in 1709. However, it was on the verge of collapse in the late 19th century due to the weight of its huge roof. The collapse was prevented through a first restoration (1904–1913), and its current appearance was completed using steel framing between 1974 and 1980. Its Great Buddha Hall houses the world's largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana, known in Japanese as Daibutsu (大仏). The temple also serves as the Japanese headquarters of the Kegon school of Buddhism. The temple is a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site as one of the "Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara", together with seven other sites in the city of Nara.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Tōdai-ji Temple

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia