Kyoto’s Two Most Popular Sites: a Tour Journal with a Western Buddhist’s Perspective

by Nicholas Lemon

Living as a foreign resident in Japan I’ve always taken note whenever I visit a nearby bookstore’s English section, and the shelves of books on local and national tourism. Given the volumes and variety of cultural sites, I feel like writing about Japan really is just an oversaturated market. But then it occurred to me that every experience is unique. And some people, no matter how many volumes they read, they will always be eager to compare and contrast new and differing insights and perspectives. It helps that I have experience in tour guiding and living as a graduate student in Kyoto, so I think I could offer a fresh way to see the ancient capital and cultural heart of Japan. Come with me on my tour journal around Kyoto using some of the photos I have taken. But before we go, I should share some things about myself. For starters, I’m from the United States. I hail from Stetson University, DeLand, Florida where I received my BA in political science and international studies and I was a graduate student at Doshisha University’s Graduate School of Global Studies in American and peace studies. But that is not the extent to my educational background. I have taken various courses on the humanities, religious studies (including religions of the East), Western, Eastern, and Buddhist philosophy. Although, like most white Americans, I was nominally Christian in my early years, I’ve progressively taken to declaring myself a Buddhist. I was originally an agnostic theist, and had a long, drawn-out phase defined by firm skepticism, and then through the span of about six years, I progressively identified with secular Buddhism. I believe it is helpful for a speaker or guide to show which lens they view the world through in order to give a better understanding of their perspective. At times I am surprised at myself when I admit I am a Buddhist to others. The title never really seems so important, but my worldview has changed so dramatically through my upbringing, and I think it also seems to contrast with other worldviews. It’s funny really, because I always find myself discussing Buddhism among Japanese people, whether adults or the children I’ve guided on tours, even if it was unsolicited. My broken Japanese is the usual barrier to understanding. At which point I can tell the majority of people I speak to are in a hurry to find a way to tactfully end the conversation.

Me standing in the audience for Jidai Matsuri (Festival of the Ages) at Heian Jingu Shinto Shrine.

Photo: Heian-Jingu Mae (22 October 2018), Nicholas Lemon When fluent conversation is manageable, we inevitably hover around superficial discussion topics. This becomes really intriguing to me at times, especially when my Japanese interlocutor is unable to express the difference between a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple. And this is the mistake so many of us foreign Japanophiles make when coming to Japan. We tend to think every Japanese person is going to know every bit of trivial knowledge we studied up on before arriving. But that just isn’t the case. And it is also ironic because being outspoken is just not a social virtue in Japan. So my ability to differentiate Shinto and Buddhist traditions is typically informed by reading books and literature available on site at the relevant point of interest. This is what I did in order to write this very article exploring the two most popular sites in Kyoto city: Kiyomizu-dera temple, and Kinkaku-ji temple. Anyways, enough about me- let’s move on to our first destination: Kiyomizu-dera temple. KIYOMIZU-DERA: A SITE FOR SYNCRETISM Syncretism is the common religious or cultural practice of blending beliefs from different origins. Many who study Japanese culture will quickly come to realize that syncretism is pretty much found everywhere in Japan. So, it stands to reason many people find it hard to distinguish Buddhist temples from Shinto shrines. Take Kyoto’s Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺, literally “Pure Water Temple”), which is possibly their most visited temple— this monastery was erected in the late Nara period (778 CE) as a hold for the Hossō sect of Buddhism seated upon the Otowa waterfall from which the temple gets its appellation. (Hossō has another designation to Westerner’s: Yogācāra, but I will refer to it as Hossō hereon for the sake of simplicity.) Jishu-jinja (地主神社literally “Landlord Shrine” in the feudal sense) cohabits on Kiyomizu-dera’s premises. And this cohabitation is seldom understood. But upon numerous inquiries with locals I have been told that, even though no one knows the age of the shrine, it has been there since before Kiyomizu-dera, possibly adding to the notion that this region of the Higashiyama mountain range is sacred. Yet no one I know is able to confirm this hypothesis and this unknown factor gave me the urge to investigate for myself. I found some interesting details regarding a folkloric origin story. The ambivalent or syncretic disposition towards Shintoism and Buddhism is so common in Japan that it is difficult to distinguish regional beliefs without having a deeper understanding of their origins. One example stems from Kiyomizu-dera herself. Being the nerd I am, I couldn’t help but wonder about the temple structures painted in white and vermillion red. They are colors we expect to see at Shinto sites, not necessarily Buddhist temples. Initially I thought these buildings, and those of Jishu-jinja were connected. But I quickly understood that the buildings in question are actually Buddhist in purpose and origin. These structures include the Niō-mon (仁王門literally “benevolent kings’ gate” but rendered “Deva guardian gate”), the Sai-mon (西門literally “West gate”), the Sanju no tō (三重塔literally “three storied pagoda”), the Kyo-Dō (経堂literally “Sutra Hall”), and the Kaisan-dō (開山堂interpreted as “founder’s hall”). But no matter who I asked or where I looked, there is no satisfactory answer as to why these structures have come to resemble Shinto edifices rather than Buddhist ones. So the hunt continues…

Photo: Kiyomizu-dera, Kyo-Dō sutra hall and Sanju no tō Pagoda, autumn illumination, (November 2016), Nicholas Lemon IDENTIFYING A BUDDHIST STRUCTURE The Niō of the Niō-mon gate are Mahayana Buddhist deities that originate from Hindu devas (demi gods) given the task to guard the temple grounds from evil intentions. Their gaze is fierce, and many Western people mistake them for demons. Devas are deities borrowed from Hinduism and many Buddhists like myself understand them to be allegorical archetypes as opposed to supernatural beings. The Sanju no tō pagoda symbolically represents the Buddha’s transcendence into parinibbāna (Pali for the ascension into eternal Nirvana upon enlightened person’s death). Yet the function of Japanese pagodas has changed over time and between sects. It is not uncommon to see depictions of Gautama Buddha (the first Buddha, and my principal Buddha), Amidha Buddha (the Pure Land sect’s principal Buddha), or Vairocana (Dainichi) Buddha (the Shingon sect’s principal Buddha) among a procession of devas. Since pagodas are actually successor edifices to stupas (burial mounds encased in stone), they were traditionally used to house the remains and relics of deceased monks. Some pagodas may still serve this function. But that purpose has mostly been given to the shariden in Japanese sects (this structure will be discussed in more detail below). The Kyo-Dō houses the library of sutras (Buddhist literature) and reading/study rooms. The Kaisan-dō commemorates the abbot and his line of succession within the monastery. Each of these buildings is expressly Buddhist, but they resemble Shinto shrine color schemes. And whenever I inquired about this, I was given the same ambivalent reply as always.

Photo: Kiyomizu-dera, Niō-mon Deva guardian gate, (September 2017), Nicholas Lemon Luckily I have taken some knowledge with me from my time living and studying in China before moving to Japan. And there I learned that the Tang dynasty (c. 618- 907 CE, China’s contemporary era to Japan’s Nara period) featured the great Dàcí'ēn Sì (大慈恩寺 literally “the Temple of Grand Benevolence”) in Xi’an. And I visited the reconstruction of that very temple just months before my arrival in Japan in 2016. And Dàcí'ēn Sì was an ancient center for the Fǎxiàng-zōng sect of Chinese Buddhism, which is pronounced Hossō-shu in Japanese- the Hossō sect. After looking back at my materials from Dàcí'ēn Sì, I learned the sect has the tradition of using red on white as a scheme for their buildings that goes back to the Tang dynasty. And the reconstructed structures reflect that tradition today in modern Xi’an.

Kiyomizu-dera is actually considered a branch temple of Kōfuku-ji temple in Nara and was commissioned by shogun, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758-811 CE). There is a long circulated tale that the founding abbot I mentioned earlier was the esoteric monk named Enchin (814–891 CE) (this is dubious for many reasons, notably Enchin’s sectarian affiliation and the fact he was not a contemporary of Sakunoe no Tamuramaro). As the story goes, Enchin dreamed that Kannon, the bodhisattva of mercy and compassion, urged him to navigate the Kizugawa River from Nara and to find a font flowing with pristine waters. Upon his whimsical journey to Kyoto he discovered Otowa waterfall in the Higashiyama mountain range. A Buddhist hermit named Gyōei Koji was waiting for Enchin there to lend him a sacred piece of wood so that he may carve a statue of Kannon and enshrine it at his home atop the mountain. Sakanoue no Tamuramaro eventually discovered Gyōei Koji’s abode in Higashiyama while hunting deer and seeking a means to pray for his ailing wife. The shogun met Enchin at the newfound altar and was given a lecture inspired by the parables of Kannon. He was given the invaluable hōgo (法語 translated “dharma talk” or “sermon”) on the sanctity of all life, and that compassion prevails over all unskillful mental states. Sakanoue no Tamuramaro was overcome by his own guilt for killing a deer so close to Kannon’s sanctuary that he was a Buddhist convert on the spot. He consequently ordered a larger structure to be built upon the Otowa mount and waterfall, and this was the point from which the rest of Kiyomizu-dera was built and it was administered to be put under the jurisdiction of Kōfuku-ji in Nara.

This early relationship with Nara as its headquarters stands out in Kyoto as it is a contrast with a majority of Kyoto’s popular temples which are typically headquartered within Kyoto city. One easy example comes to mind: Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺literally “Golden Pavilion Temple”; officially Rokuon-ji鹿苑寺, literally “Deer Garden Temple”), although more famous by leagues than its headquarters, Shokoku-ji temple (相国寺), it is still headquartered in the latter’s location, in a more discreet property at the center of Kyoto city. Speaking of which, on the topic of painted and gilded edifices: The discussion of Kinkaku-ji’s golden pavilion often centers around the significance of gold in Buddhist settings. To many, it seems this extravagant choice for Buddhist architecture is out of place. And I was initially on the critical end of this debate, but my stance has shifted, if just a little since. So, to explain what I mean, let’s go further north into Kyoto’s Kitayama district to discuss Kinkaku-ji for a moment…

Photo: Zen monks at Shokoku-ji Temple’s Senmon Dōjō, (November 2019), Nicholas Lemon GOLD AND THE BODHISATTVA

To be totally up front with you, I am not a fan of gold. I don’t like the color. I don’t see any inherent value in it beyond artistry and as a conductor. And I struggle with understanding how gold; a color typically used to illustrate greed in the West is the focal point of a Buddhist temple (examples of this symbolism in Western folklore range from Midas – to the dragon Fafnir in Norse mythology– to Scrooge McDuck). But Kinkaku-ji’s pavilion wasn’t always as gilded as it is today. Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was the founding patron of the complex, but it wasn’t donated to the Rinzai Zen sect until his death in 1408 CE as per his will. He purchased the land from descendants of the renowned waka poet, Saionji Kintsune in 1397 CE. The Ōnin war (centered in Kyoto from 1467 to 1477 CE) laid waste to the entire temple complex, and barely left the pavilion in its place. In the dawn of the Edo period, Abbot Saisho Shotai (1548-1607 CE) was appointed by shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu to head Rokuon-ji, and the temple was sponsored and designated as an official center for Zen practice. However, the Meiji restoration period (1868-1912 CE) was a period of civil war, and bitter feuds erupted between people of all different factions. As a result, the temple lost all of its financial support and fell upon hard times. The pavilion was in such disrepair that by 1886 the pavilion’s gold leaf was almost completely peeled off. Attempts at restoring gold leaf to the original Kukkyō-chō (究竟頂literally “research spire”, the third floor that was modeled in a Chinese Chan/Zen variation) and at repairing the bottom two floors was further disrupted in 1950, when the Second World War was in the living memories of everyone, a tragic novice monk, Hayashi Yoken, burned it down, presumably because he struggled with mental illness (schizophrenia and a persecution complex). The deed resulted in a speculative public discourse on Yoken’s motivations that could be said to have culminated into Yukio Mishima’s 1956 novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

Photo: The popular Kinkaku Golden Pavilion at Rokuon-ji Temple, (May 2018), Nicholas Lemon The pavilion was swiftly, yet methodically, repaired just a year before the novel’s release, in 1955 and this time it was gilded with gold on the reconstructed Kukkyō-chō as well as the Cho’on-dō (潮音洞literally “tidal sound den”, the second floor designed in the samurai residential style known as buke-zukuri, 武家造literally “samurai construction”). By 1987 the structure was completed in roughly the same way it appears today, but with even thicker gold leaf. The symbolism of the gold structure is more an indication of its roots in the Ashikaga clan, and a continued effort to preserve the legacy of the bakufu (shogunate’s) power center in the Kitayama (北山literally “North Mountain”) district of Kyoto city. Well, that explains the exterior, and possibly the more popular elements of the pavilion. But there are also the deeper elements of the temple that do designate the structure as Buddhist in culture and tradition. The interior of the pavilion is off limits to the average tourist, but if you look across the garden pond into the ground floor the Hōssui-in (放水院)— which is built in the shinden-zukuri style (寝殿造the Heian-kyō palatial style of garden architecture) —you would see statues of Gautama Buddha. The structure symbolically serves as a shariden (舎利殿, literally “reliquary hall”) that is said to contain the ashes of the Buddha. The unseen interior of the Cho’on-dō (second floor) contains murals surrounding a statue of the bodhisattva of mercy and compassion- Kannon. For me, this is symbolic in two ways. For one, Kannon is an emanation of the Buddha (in my view) that represents a conscientious mind that hears the beckoning of those experiencing the worst of tribulations, yet like a guardian angel, she remains unseen by the common gaze. And secondly, the position of Kannon above Gautama Buddha represents the fact that the former is in a vantage point to receive such cries, and the latter is in his position of Samadhi (perfect concentration and meditative consciousness) as he is grounded to the Earth.

Photo: Kinkaku Golden Pavilion at Rokuon-ji Temple, (May 2018), Nicholas Lemon

The Buddha is often an archetype for one who is grounded in their views and equanimous in the face of tribulations. He is an archetype for the individual coming to grips with adversity and overcoming that adversity with sheer determination and mindfulness. Kannon is a bodhisattva that represents compassion and the understanding we feel for others with whom we share an empathic connection. Kannon has her history in an early Chinese syncretic blend of folk religion and Buddhism that developed sometime in the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE). Before then, Kannon was imagined as a masculine figure with differing attributes, as opposed to the feminine form that assumes the divine feminine visage. The Chinese alias given to Kannon is Guanyin (觀音contraction of觀世音 “perceiver of the sounds of the world”) and her somewhat anomalous Sanskrit appellation is Avalokiteśvara. I say anomalous because the –īśvara suffix of her name is more keeping in the tradition of Hindu doctrinal worship of Shiva as a creator god of the universe. This cosmology is not shared beyond Hindu projections onto Buddhism (this happens in areas of majority Hindu populations), and so this appellation is somewhat out of place. For me, these signs of syncretism trouble notions of what is “truth” in the orthopraxy (traditional practice for the sake of proper conduct) of lay people in Buddhism or any other belief system. However, I respect the archetype of Kannon as being a symbol of compassion personified because she becomes a useful aid for teaching ethical principles to people, like Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, who struggle with empathy and compassion.

Photo: Kannon Statue, Ryōzen Kannon Pacific War memorial, (February 2020), Nicholas Lemon

REFLECTIONS Kiyomizu-dera temple was my first actual temple visit in Japan. I did have a short shrine visit ten years prior in Tokyo, but May 19th 2016 was the day I first stepped foot on a Buddhist temple in Japan. I bashfully admit this is a point of nostalgia for me. I honestly didn’t know at the time how fortunate I was to stay at a Higashiyama hotel just a short uphill walk from the premise on Kiyomizu-mae (Kiyomizu’s access road). That day I spoiled myself on some local confectionery, such as yatsuhashi (八ツ橋, which are glutinous rice flour pouches filled with fruit jam or sweet bean paste called anko). And I dined in a hole-in-the-wall sushi restaurant. I knew very little Japanese, but most of the people who greeted me were so polite, even though I’m sure I looked rather unusual to them at the time. I think, if I had a chance to have another “first visit” in Kyoto, I don’t think I would change a thing about the location, nor the destination. I would have simply changed some of my own actions and been more adamant about studying practical Japanese conversation.

Photo: Ninenzaka, the historic thoroughfare in Higashiyama district leading to Kiyomizu-dera, (August 2019), Nicholas Lemon For the longest time I avoided Rokuon-ji specifically because of the gold motif of the Kinkaku golden pavilion. But I eventually visited there for work with my tour company, and I learned a lot from that experience. I am still unmoved from my aversion towards gold, and the clearly contradictory issue it proposes as a Buddhist symbol, but I suppose it is understandable that keepers of the shariden, reliquary hall would want to designate it in this way. The garden itself is a beautiful setting, and the pavilion is like something out of a fantasy novel. And despite the shariden having been a symbol of oppressive feudal power in the past, it now serves almost as a communal museum piece for even common people to view. In that sense, my demeanor towards the site changed completely. And I suppose the most virtuous thing about Kinkaku-ji is that the site has brought commerce and plenty of joyful memories to so many people. And that, I think, is validation enough, for even the Buddha to be content with. In the spirit of muditā (a Pali word meaning “empathic joy”), I have been able to enjoy the site in the company of other people who found joy in their visit.

Photo: Detail of Kinkaku’s Hō-ō phoenix ornament at Rokuon-ji Temple with a cameo from a passing helicopter, (May 2018), Nicholas Lemon At the very top of the Kinkaku is perched a Hō-ō ornament (鳳凰, from Chinese, fenghuang “golden phoenix”). Some sources say the mythical creature has symbolized the Japanese goddess of the Sun, Amaterasu. But here I think the Hō-ō is more connected with the Buddhist tradition extending from China, what with all of the architectural influences and affiliation with the Zen sect. And in some sense this phoenix has been open to interpretation. For me the ornament is a triumphant declaration that the shariden has been resurrected, from war, poverty, and postwar depression- the site has become a site for people from around the world to come and establish new memories. I have visited Rokuon-ji several times since living in Japan, and I have been delighted to hear Mandarin, Korean, Swedish, German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and many other languages spoken there. Sadly, the pandemic has halted frequent travel for the time-being. But I am optimistic that, like the Kinkaku pavilion, the whole world might be restored, and bolstered further still, and will rise from the ashes fully converted from a state of exclusivity into one of plurality and inclusivity.

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