Temple Time: Konkai Komyoji
Apr. 25th, 2005 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI'm spending far too much time online as of late. In order to make myself feel as if this serves some purpose (and to help shore up my foundering English skills), I'm going to make good on my threat of a few days ago to start writing up some of my favorite sightseeing spots in Japan. We're going to start with the temples. I love temples. I could happily spend days on end tromping about to various temples. The people I go on trips with get tired of me because all I want to do is go to temples. Today, I bring you Konkai Komyouji, also known as Kurodani or Kurodanisan.
This is an out-of-the-way temple in the east (I believe) of Kyoto. It's Jodo Shin, or Pure Land in its affliation, as opposed to Zen, which is what most Westerners think of when someone mentions Buddhism. It was founded by Honen as a training temple.
It is also a sentimental place for me. Thanks to my school failing to inform me about the extra week or so of non-nenkyuu vacation time I would receive in 2002/3, I made plans to return to America for five days, only to discover that I actually had another eight days of holiday time, which I would thus be spending on my own in Japan. Ever resourceful, I invited myself along on a Kyoto trip with some friends from my city.
None of us had ever done New Year's in Japan before, so we planned to do the whole temple bell ringing and Hatsumode extravaganza. We kicked New Year's evening off at Peace, a great vegetarian restaurant near Kyoto University. My friend Jamie wanted to do the bell ringing at a nearby temple she'd found.
"Um, I think that's a shrine," I told her. "They don't do bell ringing at shrines."
"No," she said, "It's a temple. I saw them getting ready."
Sure enough, it was a shrine - Yoshida Jinja, to be exact. We strolled onto the grounds at 11:00pm to find them deserted. With no better ideas presenting themselves, we decided to wander back toward Gion and Pontcho. There were bound to be a few temples on the way; this was Kyoto after all. I was really bummed to be missing the bell ringing, especially because we could hear the massive bell at Chionin ringing in the distance. And then we stumbled upon Konkai Komyoji, or Kurotanisan, as it's affectionately called.
Which is actually a pretty important temple, although I don't remember ever having seen anything about it in most English-language Kyoto guidebooks. Anyway, we approached the temple to find that the New Year's service was already underway:
I love Buddhist services. There's just something about them that sends ooh! chills down my spine in a way other religious services never have, and this was no exception. The hondo (main worship hall) was luminous, and there were about 15 monks and acolytes chanting to Amida Buddha inside. We entered and sat in the back, behind about fifty or so other worshippers and watched.
Then it was time to ring the temple bell. Many Buddhist temples hold New Year's eve services, which culminate at midnight with the temple bell being rung 108 times to purge the world of the 108 sins. The larger and more popular temples require participants to sign up in advance, or hand out tickets to celebrants on a first-come first-serve basis, which is what Konkai Komyoji does. We'd come too late to get tickets, but a wonderful stranger gave me his ticket:
I got into the queue to ring the bell:
Here's a picture of the temple bell:
Here it is up close, with a security guard on hand:
And someone ringing it:
Here I go!
This area of the city is mostly residential, and there aren't many lights, so you can just barely make out Kurodani's main gate in this photo:
I imagine this is what all of Kyoto must have looked like 80 years ago.
Here's a picture of the gate in daytime, the main hall, one of the outbuildings, and a Buddha statue from nearby the bell. This is an archival photograph of the temple graveyard, dating from the 1920s, I believe.
This screen was hanging to my right as I entered the temple on New Year's eve. As you can see from the photograph, it's quite striking, and even more so in the flesh. It's several hundred years old, and one of the temple's treasures:
I believe it's usually on display in one of Kyoto's museums, so I was extremely lucky to see it in its natural environment.
So overall, a very cool temple indeed. Japanese guidebooks recommend going there during sunrise or the full moon, during which times the grounds and cemetery are apparently very picturesque.
That will be all.
This is an out-of-the-way temple in the east (I believe) of Kyoto. It's Jodo Shin, or Pure Land in its affliation, as opposed to Zen, which is what most Westerners think of when someone mentions Buddhism. It was founded by Honen as a training temple.
It is also a sentimental place for me. Thanks to my school failing to inform me about the extra week or so of non-nenkyuu vacation time I would receive in 2002/3, I made plans to return to America for five days, only to discover that I actually had another eight days of holiday time, which I would thus be spending on my own in Japan. Ever resourceful, I invited myself along on a Kyoto trip with some friends from my city.
None of us had ever done New Year's in Japan before, so we planned to do the whole temple bell ringing and Hatsumode extravaganza. We kicked New Year's evening off at Peace, a great vegetarian restaurant near Kyoto University. My friend Jamie wanted to do the bell ringing at a nearby temple she'd found.
"Um, I think that's a shrine," I told her. "They don't do bell ringing at shrines."
"No," she said, "It's a temple. I saw them getting ready."
Sure enough, it was a shrine - Yoshida Jinja, to be exact. We strolled onto the grounds at 11:00pm to find them deserted. With no better ideas presenting themselves, we decided to wander back toward Gion and Pontcho. There were bound to be a few temples on the way; this was Kyoto after all. I was really bummed to be missing the bell ringing, especially because we could hear the massive bell at Chionin ringing in the distance. And then we stumbled upon Konkai Komyoji, or Kurotanisan, as it's affectionately called.
Which is actually a pretty important temple, although I don't remember ever having seen anything about it in most English-language Kyoto guidebooks. Anyway, we approached the temple to find that the New Year's service was already underway:
I love Buddhist services. There's just something about them that sends ooh! chills down my spine in a way other religious services never have, and this was no exception. The hondo (main worship hall) was luminous, and there were about 15 monks and acolytes chanting to Amida Buddha inside. We entered and sat in the back, behind about fifty or so other worshippers and watched.
Then it was time to ring the temple bell. Many Buddhist temples hold New Year's eve services, which culminate at midnight with the temple bell being rung 108 times to purge the world of the 108 sins. The larger and more popular temples require participants to sign up in advance, or hand out tickets to celebrants on a first-come first-serve basis, which is what Konkai Komyoji does. We'd come too late to get tickets, but a wonderful stranger gave me his ticket:
I got into the queue to ring the bell:
Here's a picture of the temple bell:
Here it is up close, with a security guard on hand:
And someone ringing it:
Here I go!
This area of the city is mostly residential, and there aren't many lights, so you can just barely make out Kurodani's main gate in this photo:
I imagine this is what all of Kyoto must have looked like 80 years ago.
Here's a picture of the gate in daytime, the main hall, one of the outbuildings, and a Buddha statue from nearby the bell. This is an archival photograph of the temple graveyard, dating from the 1920s, I believe.
This screen was hanging to my right as I entered the temple on New Year's eve. As you can see from the photograph, it's quite striking, and even more so in the flesh. It's several hundred years old, and one of the temple's treasures:
I believe it's usually on display in one of Kyoto's museums, so I was extremely lucky to see it in its natural environment.
So overall, a very cool temple indeed. Japanese guidebooks recommend going there during sunrise or the full moon, during which times the grounds and cemetery are apparently very picturesque.
That will be all.