{Inter} Cultural Japan

In the concrete jungle of Tokyo’s Meguro Ward stands a small temple with a dramatic history. Here started one of the terrible fires that in the past so often laid the metropolis to waste. The temple has atoned for the disaster by sculpting a set of 500 arhats, disciples of the Buddha, whose suffering expressions recall the tragedy. The historical Buddha, Shaka Nyorai, himself is present in the form of an exquisite wooden statue that is only shown on special occasions.

[Daienji Main Hall]

When in the late tenth century Chonen, a priest from Nara’s Todaiji, visited China, he came across a statue of Shaka Nyorai, the historical Buddha, that so impressed him that he asked a prominent Chinese sculptor to make a copy for him. Indeed, the statue, standing upright and clad in a long flowing robe, has a perfectly balanced symmetry which must have impressed the Japanese as continentally exotic. Chonen stored the copy he brought back from China in Seiryoji, in the western outskirts of Kyoto.

The statue proved so popular that soon more copies were made in Japan. These found their way to Saidaiji and Toshodaiji in Nara, as well as - via an indirect way - to Daienji, a small temple in Tokyo’s Meguro ward. The statue is only shown on special occasions, such as the beginning of the New Year.

(Statues in the grounds of Daienji]

An Old Chinese Statue in the Concrete Jungle
Thus, on January 2 I take a bus from my flat in Hiroo to nearby Meguro. Crammed with small houses and flats, there is nothing inviting about Meguro nowadays. It came as a surprise to read in a book published in 1871, Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan, that a little more than a century ago, Meguro was a village, crossed by shady lanes and bordered by hedgerows.

At that time, Meguro still provided Tokyo with vegetables, as it had done in the Edo period, when it also doubled as an arena for the falcon hunts of the shogun. The blue of the sea could just be seen in the distance, behind green pastures. All that is gone now. There is not a sprig of greenery anymore in all of Meguro and in fact you may be lucky if you find a square meter of soil that has not been plastered over with concrete or asphalt.

The only advantage of modernization is that the stench that so affronted Mitford (the sewerage of Tokyo was then carried in open buckets to the fields of Meguro) has been replaced by diesel fumes.

Daienji stands in cramped, but well-kept grounds, hedged in by a dead wall and a wedding hall, halfway down a slope just west of Meguro station. The slope is named Gyoninzaka, or Slope of the Devotees, after the followers of the ascetic yamabushi sect who frequented the temple. Daienji was in fact founded by one such ascetic, the priest Daikai, who moved here in 1624.

The Chinese-style Shaka image was not the temple’s main image at the time of its founding, and it is not known how it ended up here in Daienji, but it now forms the heart of the temple. It is housed in a concrete building to the left of the temple hall proper. I peer through the heavy, closed glass doors, and am just able to make out the shape of the Shaka. Inside, in front of the altar sits an old woman, loudly reciting a sutra, making me wonder how she has entered.

The brown wooden statue is 164 centimeters tall, and stands with one hand raised, as if in a gesture of welcome. In the hollow interior of the statue several items were found, such as a copper mirror carrying the date 1193. We therefore assume that the Shaka statue itself also dates from the late twelfth century.

[Arhat sculptures]

The Atonement of a Temple
Even though I can not get a good view because the glass doors reflect the slanting rays of the sun, I see that the Shaka exudes peace and quiet. That same peace was not the fate of Daienji. In 1772 a fire broke out in the temple that went on to destroy one-third of Edo before it could be extinguished. Because of its carelessness in starting the horrific blaze, the temple did not get permission for rebuilding until the middle of the nineteenth century. But the grounds contain an impressive monument that is a silent atonement to the souls of the victims of the conflagration.

Anonymous hands have sculpted another Shaka, but now with 500 disciples or arhats listening to his preaching. Standing closely together in the northern part of the temple grounds, these are primitive and moving relief stone carvings. The faces are ascetic, bony, suffering, a reminder of the grim destruction by fire that time and again plagued Edo. Even the stone Shaka looks thin and somehow very sad, markedly different from the fleshy wooden Shaka inside the hall.

After Daienji, I continue my exploration of Meguro’s temples by visiting another set of Shaka and arhats in Rakanji (in contrast these are sizable wood carvings, bearing humorous expressions) and I end the afternoon at Meguro Fudo (The Black-eyed Fudo), the eight century temple that gave Meguro its name. Today, the usually quiet grounds are enlivened by numerous stalls selling New Year items.

When I walk back to Meguro Station darkness has fallen already and a cold wind is blowing around the corners of the buildings. I pass a brightly lit courtyard and notice that I am back at Daienji again. The grounds are deserted now, but light shines from the hall in which the Shaka statue stands. I approach for a last look and this time I am able to get a good view of the Shaka.

Edo was time and again consumed by raging fires, Tokyo was flattened by a huge earthquake and turned into a scorched plain by fire bombings, but every time the metropolis veered back, and only grew larger and larger in the process. In the end also the green pastures and trees of Meguro were devoured.

Through all this tumult, the Shaka has been a source of consolation, shining like a soft light in the darkness.

Address: 1-8-5 Shimo-Meguro, Meguro-ku, Tokyo
Access: A five minute walk from JR Meguro Station.
Note: The Shaka statue is housed in a separate hall that is open January 1-7, April 8 and on the (varying) day of the Koshi festival. Grounds free.