Nine-Story Pagoda at Otani-Ji Temple

A Stone Pagoda Dated to 1323

Six lines of characters cut into the base of this pagoda record the day it was finished: Genkō 3, the cyclical year kinoto-i, third month, fourth day, which falls in 1323. The monument they date is a nine-story pagoda built entirely of stone, rising in tapering tiers to a height of about 4.5 meters in a valley behind the Daichō-in hall of Ōtaniji, a temple in the hills of Echizen Town, Fukui Prefecture.

The stone is Shakudani-ishi, a soft blue-green volcanic tuff quarried near the Asuwa River in what is now Fukui City. Masons across the Hokuriku region worked it for centuries because it cuts cleanly and takes fine detail, and the Ōtaniji pagoda is one of the older surviving examples of what they could do with it.

Local tradition treats the pagoda as the grave marker of Taichō, the mountain ascetic credited with opening Mt. Haku to worship. He is said to have died here in 767, and the pagoda still draws visitors who come to pay respects.

Taichō and the Temple in the Valley

Ōtaniji belongs to the Tendai school and carries the mountain name Ochisan. By temple tradition it was founded in 692 by Taichō, a monk born at Asōzu south of present-day Fukui City. The Life of the Venerable Taichō records that he trained in these hills before climbing Mt. Haku, returned in 758, and in 767 settled into the cross-legged meditation posture at Ōtani and died there at the age of 86.

For most of its history the site was not a temple and a shrine separately but a single institution of mountain worship, the administrative temple for the Ochisan Sanjo Daigongen, three deities identified with Buddhist counterparts. This blending of Shinto and Buddhist practice was typical of the Hakusan faith, the network of mountain pilgrimage centered on Mt. Haku that linked Ōtaniji with places such as Heisenji in Katsuyama. The government order of 1868 that separated Shinto from Buddhism split the institution in two, and Ochi Shrine and Ōtaniji have stood side by side ever since.

The temple keeps three seated wooden images of the deities' Buddhist forms, carved between the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. Several are shown only during the temple's lantern rite.

Why the Pagoda Matters

Stone pagodas of this height and date are uncommon in the Hokuriku region, and the Ōtaniji example is valued as one of the area's important early stone monuments. It was first listed as an Important Art Object in 1940 and designated an Important Cultural Property on 19 February 1957.

What sets it apart from other multi-story stone pagodas in Echizen is the base. The foundation block rests on a carved double-petalled inverted lotus, a form found on no other multi-tier stone pagoda in the region. The reverse face of this lotus was left plain, an omission rather than a deliberate ward against misfortune, of a kind seen on a few other Echizen monuments.

The dated inscription adds to its value. Few stone monuments of the period name both their donors and the craftsman who cut them, and this one names a donor called Kinsuke, a figure named Gyōgen, and the master mason Taira no Suemitsu. One scholar has suggested that this Suemitsu may be the same mason recorded on a 1296 stone lantern in Osaka, which would point to a craftsman sent from the capital region. The carving style argues otherwise: the Sanskrit seed-syllables sit within a local frame known as Echizen-style ornamentation, so a Fukui mason seems the more likely hand.

What to Look For

Start with the base, where the inscription runs across the front of the foundation in six short lines. The characters are worn but legible in good light, and they are the reason the pagoda can be dated so precisely.

Move up to the first story. Three of its faces carry a single Sanskrit seed-syllable each, the kind of compact script used to stand in for a deity. The front face bears the syllable for Amida Buddha, the right face the syllable for Shō-Kannon, and the left the syllable for Seishi Bosatsu, the two attendants who flank Amida. Each syllable is set inside a carved moon-disc resting on a lotus, the arrangement Fukui masons favored.

Then count the roofs. Eight of the nine were cut with carved rafters and a gentle upward curve at the eaves. The ninth, at the top, sits flat without that curve and was made in one piece with the base of the finial above it. The color and texture of the stone here differ from the tiers below. Both the top roof and the finial are replacements, added at some point after the early seventeenth century, when the original upper parts were presumably lost or broken.

The finial itself, about 95 centimeters tall, climbs through the usual stages of a pagoda spire: an inverted bowl, lotus cups, a stack of rings, a flame-shaped ornament, and a crowning jewel. Two of the four blades of the flame ornament survive.

The pagoda has not always stood where it does now. It was toppled in the Fukui earthquake of June 1948 and rebuilt the same year. When it was taken apart and repaired again in 1990 and 1991, archaeologists dug beneath the platform and found a rectangular pit, 142 by 130 centimeters and 30 centimeters deep, packed with pebbles. The setting visitors see today, with its stone railing and a lantern in front, seems to date from the mid-1860s, when the spot was arranged as Taichō's memorial in its present form.

Around Ōtaniji

The temple sits at the foot of the hills in the southern part of Echizen Town, and the grounds are open without charge. A short walk away, on a low mound called Maruyama, stands a second stone monument, the Maruyama treasure pagoda of 1352, cut from the same Shakudani stone and now a town-designated property. It was built over a pit that may have held cremated remains.

Mt. Ochi rises to the west at 612.8 meters. One of the five sacred mountains of Echizen and part of the Echizen-Kaga Coast Quasi-National Park, it carries the worship trails Taichō is said to have walked, and a well-kept path now leads up to Ochi Shrine near the summit. The wider district is known for Echizen ware, one of Japan's old pottery traditions, and for the cliffs and fishing villages of the Echizen coast a short drive west.