Tag: Kannon

Toyokawa Inari Shrine: Syncretic Religion

A little while back, during my post on Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan, I alluded to how the native Shinto religion often blended with Buddhism up until the early modern period (e.g. the Meiji Period) when they were more forcefully separated.

You can still see vestiges of this blending in some temples and shrines, but one great example is the Toyokawa Inari shrine right in the heart of Tokyo’s Minato Ward:

This Shinto shrine / Soto-Zen Buddhist temple venerates Dakini-ten (荼枳尼天), which is the Buddhist form of the Shinto kami Inari Ōkami.

Dakini-ten is based on the concept of Ḍākinī in esoteric (a.k.a. Vajrayana) Buddhism, but in Japan it blended with veneration of Shinto kami and thus took on a life of its own.

Inari Ōkami in his/her Buddhist form as Dakini-ten shining light upon a samurai warrior. Late medieval painting by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, source: Wikimedia

Anyhow, let’s talk about the temple itself. I visited the temple in 2018 and had little context back then, so I didn’t take as many good photos as I would have liked, but I will try to explain as best as I can.

Once you go past the main gate…

You come upon the main shrine to Inari Ōkami (colloquially known as “O-Inari-san”):

Another, small sub-shrine here:

You can see fox statues all over the complex, due to their close association with Inari Ōkami.

However, other deities, both Buddhist and Shinto are enshrined here too. For example, below is an esoteric-Buddhist (Vajrayana) deity named Aizen Myō-ō (愛染明王):

Also, Benzaiten, one of the Seven Luck Gods:

And Kannon Bodhisattva:

The fact that both Shinto deities like Benzaiten and Inari Ōkami reside in the same shrine as overtly Buddhist deities such as Kannon and Aizen Myō-ō is somewhat unusual, but really isn’t. This was normative for Japanese religion until the modern century. Japan has had two religions for a very long time, and they’ve co-existed for so long, that they often blended together.

If you look at American religion, pagan religion and Christianity co-existed for so long (even when paganism was officially repressed) that the two blended together. Things we take for granted such as Christmas trees, mistletoe, Easter eggs, and such are all examples where they have blended together to religion as we know it today. This might offend religious purists (to be fair everything annoys religious purists), but this is how societies absorb and adapt religions over generations. Japanese culture simply had different religions to work with.

Anyhow, fascinating stuff.

P.S. My omikuji fortune that visit was bad luck (kyō, 凶). I don’t remember having a particular bad year, especially compared to 2020 later, but it was surprising to get an overtly bad fortune for a change.

Kiyomizudera Redux

As part of our trip this summer to Japan, including Kyoto and Nara, we visited the temple of Kiyomizu-dera (lit. “The temple of pure water”). We had visited this temple wayyyyyy back in 2005 during my first even trip to Japan, but in 18 years I have learned a lot about Buddhism in Japan and it was nice to come again with a more discerning eye, and a better camera. Unlike our last visit, which was in the middle of January, this last visit was in July when it was extremely hot and muggy, despite the seemingly cloudy weather.

This post is meant to be an updated tour of Kiyomizudera, but if you want more details about the temple, feel free to read the original post, or checkout the official website.

Anyhow, Kiyomizudera sits upon a hill toward the outskirts of Kyoto (which sits in a valley), and leads up to a path like so.

If you go up the stairs on the left, and pass under the gate, you will see the following

Up close, the tall pagoda (a Buddhist stupa) is very brightly colored. This reflects style used in early Japanese architecture, versus later more subdued color schemes.

From a bird’s eye view, Kiyomizudera is laid out like an “L”, but flipped vertically. From the pagoda you can see a long veranda overlooking the famous drop-off to the right, and the main temple to the left (hard to see in this photo). Further back, the path turns right.

Looking backward…

Here is the aforementioned drop-off which lets you look out over the hillside:

Directly behind the drop-off, is the main temple, devoted to the Bodhisattva Kannon. Unfortunately, photos are not allowed inside, so instead you can see my handsome face just outside. Inside, the statue of Kannon is shielded behind a wire mesh, with a large Buddhist bell that people can ring, offer veneration, etc. You can see the central figure on the official website here. This is a good example of the classic “1000-armed” Kannon, whose many arms express Kannon’s countless and varied efforts to help all beings. Kannon epitomizes many aspects of Mahayana Buddhism all in one nice image.

If you were to look up you can see some very pretty architecture.

If you go further, around the “bend” of the “L”, to the right are a couple sub-temples:

This sub-temple is devoted to Amitabha Buddha (e.g. Amida Buddha). Amida Buddha is the central figure of Pure Land Buddhism, which is prominent in the Tendai Buddhist tradition (of which Kiyomizudera is one such temple). Later Pure Land-exclusive sects all branched from Tendai: Jodo Shu, Jodo Shinshu, Ji-Shu, etc.

Near the bend of the “L”, there is a set of stairs that will take you down to the lower level. The drop-off I showed before was built entirely with wood, using pegs and no metal nails. Yet, as you can see, it is very well-constructed.

At the bottom is a small waterfall and spring from which the temple gets its name.

A view of the drop-off, from the bottom.

Kiyomizudera is a pretty neat temple, and as one of the oldest in Kyoto, it has seen countless, countless visitors of all kinds. It was nice to come once again, and pay respects to Kannon Bodhisattva here, and to better understand the layout and the significance of the temple with the benefit of experience and hindsight.

P.S. Been thoroughly busy these past weeks, and blogging a lot less than I used to. Most of this is related to holidays, but also work. Hopefully things will quiet down again soon.