A Premium Mindfulness Journey in Ancient Nara

When I take visitors to Nara, they go expecting to see the Great Buddha at Todaiji. But I take them first to the museum within the grounds of Kofukuji temple. Known as the National Treasure Hall, it contains some of the finest sculpture in all of East Asia.

Here one enters a portal into ancient Japan. Some pieces even precede the founding of Nara in 720. One of the most striking sculptures is a large bronze Head of the Buddha, made in 685, with long eyes and sculpted eyebrows. I called it the “Egyptian Buddha” for its primal power, and the sense that it comes to us from a mythical and remote era. Other sculptures range from the Nara (710-294), Heian (794-1185), and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods.

Best known, perhaps one of the best loved statues in Japan, is the Ashura (created in 734), one of the protective deities known as the “Eight Legions”. This group of statues was made with the so-called “dry lacquer” technique. The sculptors first fashion a body of clay, which they cover with sheets of lacquer, molding them into the desired shape. After it dries, they open the piece up and remove the clay interior. The face, hands, and other details are shaped and the surface is finished with clay-like lacquer and painted. The result is a lightweight sculpture, with features of a delicacy that cannot be matched in bronze, stone, or wood.

The Eight Legions at Kofukuji are unique, in that while warriors, their faces are gentle, even childlike. Six-armed Ashura has a slim body and long protruding arms, surmounted by a head with three faces, each slightly different. They portray a stubborn young boy, a thoughtful adolescent, and facing us, a forceful young man. The combination of strength and sweetness could be said to express the essence of Buddhism. If you were to name ten of the most precious art works in Asia, this would be one of them.

It doesn’t end with the National Treasure Museum. Kofukuji’s grounds include a number of important temple buildings, each filled with more treasure. Tokondo (the Eastern Golden Hall) enshrines sculptures from Nara through Muromachi (1336-1573). At the center of the altar stands a large bronze Medicine Buddha (1415), flanked by two early Kamakura (ca 1200) wooden sculptures of Monju (Bodhisattva of Wisdom), and Vimalakirti (a lay disciple of the Buddha known for his wisdom). Both are noted for their personality and realism. Further to the sides are two statues of the Bodhisattvas of the Sun and the Moon, dating to mid-Nara (ca. 750).

These and Kofukuji’s many other treasures are a miracle of preservation. In fact, Kofukuji, sometimes during wars, sometimes by accident, burned down again and again. Each time it was rebuilt with new art taking the place of what that had been destroyed.

While lesser known to tourists to Nara today, Kofukuji before modern times held an importance second only to Todaiji. Todaiji was built by and symbolized the Emperor. Kofukuji, and its companion Kasuga Shrine, were patronized by the noble Fujiwara family who intermarried with the Imperial Family and dominated the court. Kofukuji’s huge precincts, including many temples now lost, stretched over most of Nara Park, as well as the grounds of the neighboring Nara Prefectural Office, reaching south to what’s now the Nara Hotel.

The rebuilding of Kofukuji was therefore a national priority, supported first by the Imperial Court and later by the Shoguns. The scale of the rebuilding gives us a sense of Kofukuji’s importance to the nation. The Nan’endo was rebuilt five times (present structure 1789); the five-story pagoda six times (present structure 1426); the Tokondo five times (present structure 1415); and the large central Chukondo an incredible nine times (present structure 2018).

Dry lacquer pieces such as the Eight Legions were hollow and lightweight, so monks could pick them up and rush them out of burning buildings. This accounts for why such ancient pieces survived, when larger sculptures of later eras didn’t.

The Head of the Buddha traced a truly dramatic journey through history. It started out in 685 as the head of a large bronze Medicine Buddha in Yamada-dera temple in Asuka, the capital before Nara. By the mid 8th century it had been joined on the altar with the Bodhisattvas of the Sun and the Moon. They sat in Asuka for four hundred years.

After the disastrous Genji-Heike wars of the 1180s, when most of Kofukuji had been reduced to ashes, the temple needed a Medicine Buddha for its new main hall. In 1187 armed monks from Kofukuji raided Yamada-dera, and carried the Medicine Buddha and the Sun and Moon off to Kofukuji. Another three centuries passed.

In 1411 fire struck again. The Sun and Moon were rescued, but the great bronze Medicine Buddha melted away except for the Head. A new Medicine Buddha was commissioned in 1415 and installed in the Tokondo hall. This is the one we see today, flanked by the Sun and Moon from Asuka.

The Head was buried under the altar in 1415 and forgotten about for another five centuries. In 1937, when the Tokondo underwent restoration, the Head of the Buddha was rediscovered, and brought to the Museum where we see it today.

What we see at Kofukuji is a tale of survival and renewal. The temple rescued old pieces from wars and fires. They commissioned new pieces in later eras, masterpieces carved by the leading sculptors of the day. The result is one of the world’s greatest treasure houses of religious and spiritual art.

Alex Kerr

Asian Culture Scholar, Professor at Kyoto University of Advanced Science

Born in the United States in 1952. First visited Japan in 1964. Studied JapaneseStudies at Yale University and Chinese Studies at Oxford University. He has resided in Kameoka City, Kyoto Prefecture since 1977.

In 1973, he purchased "Chiiori," a 300-year-old thatched-roof farmhouse in the Iya Valley of Tokushima Prefecture, and has since been engaged in the restoration of traditional houses, having renovated approximately 50 properties. In 2024, he was awarded the Architectural Institute of Japan Cultural Award.

He actively promotes inbound tourism and cultural events. In 2008, he was appointed a Visit Japan Ambassador, and in 2019, received the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs.

Books:
Lost Japan (1993), Dogs and Demons (2002), Nippon Keikan-ron (A Theory of Japanese Landscapes, 2014), Another Kyoto (2016), Nippon Junrei (Pilgrimage through Japan), among others.