A former battleground, now a sanctuary of peace
I had arrived in Hiraizumi, Iwate, in the early evening, checked into the humble inn where I was to stay, and ate some hot bibimbap while chatting with the elderly Korean proprietor of the small, cluttered restaurant next door.
After a good night’s sleep on comfortable futons, I borrowed a bicycle from the innkeeper and was on the road before 7:00 AM, riding west to visit the Takkoku Saikōji Temple. Along the way I passed harvested rice drying in the fields in a manner I learned was common in Iwate and Miyagi. The drying rice looked like characters from a Studio Ghibli film.
Or like rows of the old-style straw raincoats worn in Japan in yesteryear. They were nothing like the straightly hung rice I was used to seeing in other parts of Japan.
After stopping to take photos of the rice and chat with a farmer, I rode a bit further and arrived at the temple, six kilometers east of Hiraizumi. I expected to find a Buddhist temple, yet before me stood Shinto torii gates.
Takkoku Seikōji Temple’s origin
In the late 8th century, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro was appointed as Seiitai-Shōgun, 征夷大将軍, Supreme Commander Against the Barbarians, by Emperor Kanmu.
The “barbarians” he was sent to subjugate were the Emishi, tribes who inhabited northern Honshu and Hokkaido — the wilderness “beyond the road,” or Michinoku. These people, considered by some to be the ancestors of the Ainu, had resisted the rule of the Japanese state.
Unfortunately for the Emishi, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro succeeded in subjugating them.
In 801, to give thanks to Bishamon, the god of war, Sakanoue built the Bishamon Hall in what is now the Takkoku Seikōji Temple in the very cave that had been the Emishi leaders’ headquarters. Henceforth, it was to be a place to pray for peace.
Takkoku Seikōji Temple through the years
In the 11th century, Minamoto no Yoriyoshi visited the temple to give thanks for his victory over the powerful Emishi Abe clan and their ally, Fujiwara no Tsunekiyo.
Other luminaries of Japanese history had contact with this now quiet and somewhat forgotten temple. In the 12th century, the first of the Northern Fujiwara, Kiyohira, and his son Motohira, endowed buildings. Not long after, the first shogun, Minamoto no Yoritomo, stopped by to give thanks after his army defeated his half-brother Yoshitsune in the nearby battle of Koromogawa.
Originally, the Takkoku Seikōji Temple complex held 108 statues of Bishamon, one for each worldly desire according to Buddhist teaching. But in the 15th century, as a result of fires — the bane of Japanese structures made of paper, straw, and wood — many of the statues, as well as the temple itself, were destroyed.
The temple that stands today was built in 1961, modeled after the famed Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto which was also founded by Sakanoue no Tamuramaro before he set off on his journey to the north to conquer the Emishi.
Twenty of the original 108 statues of Bishamon remain at the Takkoku Seikōji Temple, as does the main object of worship, kept safely in the deep recesses of the cave within a cabinet donated by the famous 17th century warlord, Date Masamune.
There are smaller buildings in this temple complex, among them a temple to Benten, the goddess of intelligence, happiness, and skillfulness. She is depicted through a beautiful Heian-era statue.
Beside the main hall, a 16.5 meter statue of a seated Buddha is carved into a sandstone cliff. Called the Ganmen Daibutsu, this thousand-year-old image of Amida Nyōrai, the Buddha of the Pure Land, was created to remember the souls of those who died during local wars of the 11th century.
Only the face and part of one shoulder remain, as much of the image was destroyed by an earthquake in 1896.
And what about the Shinto torii gates at the temple’s entrance? They are a legacy of the centuries that Buddhism and Shinto had a syncretic relationship, both existing in harmony. A situation we enjoy again today.
Takkoku Seikōji Temple, surrounded by rice fields and forests, is a short drive — or bicycle ride — from Hiraizumi station.
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