is a

Buddhist temple A Buddhist temple or Buddhist monastery is the place of worship for Buddhists, the followers of Buddhism. They include the structures called vihara, chaitya, stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions and languages. Temples in Buddhism represen ...

in the town of

Kamiichi 270px, Panorama of Kamiichi is a town located in Nakaniikawa District, Toyama Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 20,827 in 7958 households and a population density of 88 persons per km². The total area of the town wa ...

Toyama Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Toyama Prefecture has a population of 1,044,588 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,247.61 km2 (1,640.01 sq mi). Toyama Prefecture borders Ishikawa Prefecture to the ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The temple belongs to the

Shingon file:Koyasan (Mount Koya) monks.jpg, Shingon monks at Mount Koya is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asia, originally spread from India to China through traveling monks suc ...

sect of

Japanese Buddhism Buddhism has been practiced in Japan since about the 6th century CE. Japanese Buddhism () created many new Buddhist schools, and some schools are original to Japan and some are derived from Chinese Buddhist schools. Japanese Buddhism has had a ...

. It is more popularly known by the name of after its main image.

History

The temple claims to have been founded in 725 AD by the wandering priest/miracle-worker

Gyōki was a Japanese Buddhist priest of the Nara period, born in Ōtori county, Kawachi Province (now Sakai, Osaka), the son of Koshi no Saichi. According to one theory, one of his ancestors was of Korean descent. Gyōki became a monk at Asuka-dera, ...

, who carved a 2.8 meter statue of Fudō Myō-ō in

bas-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...

on a

tuff Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock cont ...

cliff-face. While there are no historical records to back up this claim, the carving itself dates from the late

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

and is a designated Important Cultural Property in 1974. The statue is part of a group, which includes two of Fudō Myō-ō's assistants and , a seated statue of

Amida Nyōrai Amida can mean : Places and jurisdictions * Amida (Mesopotamia), now Diyarbakır, an ancient city in Asian Turkey; it is (nominal) seat of : ** The Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Amida ** The Latin titular Metropolitan see of Amida of the Roma ...

and a seated Buddhist priest (possibly Gyōki). The latter two statues may have been added at a later date. The Fudō Myō-ō is 2.8 meters high and remains in good very preservation as it have been protected by a building for most of history. The temple was connected with worship of the

sacred mountain Sacred mountains are central to certain religions, and are usually the subjects of many legends. For many, the most symbolic aspect of a mountain is the peak because it is believed that it is closest to heaven or other religious realms. Many rel ...

Mount Tateyama , commonly referred to as Tateyama, is a mountain located in the southeastern area of Toyama Prefecture, Japan. It is one of the tallest mountains in the Hida Mountains at . It is one of Japan's along with Mount Fuji and Mount Haku. Tateyam ...

and at one point had 21 subsidiaries and 60 chapels. The Fudō-dō was destroyed by a windstorm in 1335, by a fire set by troops of the

Uesugi clan The is a Japanese samurai clan which was at its peak one of the most powerful during the Muromachi and Sengoku periods (14th to 17th centuries). Appert, Georges. (1888) ''Ancien Japon,'' p. 79./ref> At its height, the clan had three main branch ...

during the late

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

and again by a tree in 1967. In 1930, the carvings were designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 1934. The temple's

Sanmon A , also called , is the most important gate of a Japanese Zen Buddhist temple, and is part of the Zen ''shichidō garan'', the group of buildings that forms the heart of a Zen Buddhist temple.JAANUS It can be often found in temples of other den ...

and three-story pagoda are important cultural properties of Kamiichi town. The temple also has a waterfall which flows in six streams, which is used by practitioners of ''

Shugendō is a highly syncretic religion, a body of ascetic practices that originated in the Nara Period of Japan having evolved during the 7th century from an amalgamation of beliefs, philosophies, doctrines and ritual systems drawn from local fol ...

'' for ritual purification.

References

External links

Kamiichi town official site

Toyama tourist information
{{in lang, ja Shingon temples Buddhist temples in Toyama Prefecture Kamiichi, Toyama Historic Sites of Japan History of Toyama Prefecture Important Cultural Properties of Japan Shugendō 8th-century establishments in Japan Etchū Province

History

See also

References

External links