Stupa

A dated stone pagoda from the year 801

On a tongue-shaped plateau in the Niisato district of Kiryu, in northern Gunma Prefecture, a small stone pagoda sits inside a glass-walled shelter. It is 1.85 meters tall and cut from pyroxene andesite, a porous volcanic rock. Three tiers of stone body rise as a single carved block above a foundation stone, capped by roof slabs and a finial. Across the four faces run 45 characters and a date: the seventeenth day of the seventh month of Enryaku 20, the year 801.

The name registered with Japan's cultural authorities is simply Tōba, written with the character for "stupa," followed by the description "stone three-storied pagoda." Locally it is the Yamakami Pagoda, after the place where it stands. The inscription gives the name of the man who had it made, a monk called Dōrin, and his reason: to enshrine a copy of the Lotus Sutra and offer the merit to the imperial court, the gods of heaven and earth, his parents, and every living thing.

That makes it a votive monument, not a grave marker or the central tower of a temple. The 801 date falls in the early Heian period, only a few years after the capital moved to Heian-kyō, present-day Kyoto, in 794, and around the time the monk Saichō was founding the Tendai school on Mount Hiei. For a stone monument in the eastern provinces to carry so precise a date this early is unusual.

Why it is an Important Cultural Property

Two facts give the pagoda its standing. The first is its date. Among Japanese tiered pagodas that carry an explicit year, only one is older: the Ryūfukuji pagoda in Asuka, Nara, inscribed in 751. The Yamakami Pagoda comes second. The other is its form. As a stone pagoda built specifically to hold a sutra, it has no known rival of comparable age, and specialists treat it as the earliest surviving example of its type.

The monument also matters as evidence. Firm written records of Buddhism in the eastern provinces during the eighth and ninth centuries are thin. A dated object that states its purpose in its maker's own words counts for more than a chronicle compiled generations later. Dōrin himself appears in no other surviving source. His title in the inscription, read as shōshi, has been argued over: it may mark a provincial monastic rank, or it may be a humble way of referring to himself. Some scholars link him to the lineage of Dōchū, a disciple of the Chinese master Ganjin whose followers were active across Kōzuke and Shimotsuke, the old provinces that became modern Gunma and Tochigi.

The pagoda was first recorded in print in 1929, the year after its inscription was confirmed. It had turned up by chance, sometime between the Meiji and early Shōwa eras, when woodland on the plateau was cleared for farming; the exact find-spot is no longer known. Recognition came fast. It was designated an old National Treasure on 9 June 1943, then reclassified as an Important Cultural Property on 29 August 1950, when the present Cultural Properties Protection Law took effect.

What to look for

The inscription is the reason to come, and it rewards slow reading. The 45 characters cross the four sides of the three tiers, beginning on the south face of the top tier and moving clockwise and downward: four characters to a face on the top and bottom tiers, three on the middle. Read in sequence, they enshrine the sutra, list the beings the merit is offered to, give Dōrin's name and the date, and close with the wish that those caught in the ceaseless torment of the Avīci hell may win lasting peace and cross to the far shore of enlightenment.

Look for color as well as text. The three tiers of the body were once painted vermillion, and traces of the red pigment survive. The base, the foundation, and the roof slabs were coated in black ink, a deliberate contrast meant to make the red read more strongly. The middle and upper tiers flare a little at the base, giving each a shape likened to the written character for "eight." Near the top of the body a round cavity was bored into the stone; this is where the rolled copy of the sutra is thought to have rested.

The setting is part of the visit. The plateau sits at the southern foot of Mount Akagi, and on a clear day the broad volcano fills the view to the north. The site's old name, Aizakubo, is read by some as a worn-down form of an earlier name meaning "monks' hollow," and nearby place names point to vanished halls used for Buddhist rites. No temple foundations have been found, but the cluster of names suggests this quiet farmland was once a center of provincial faith.

Around the site

The Niisato district holds several other traces of early Buddhism within a short drive. The Takei Haiji site, a National Historic Site, was long taken for the ruin of a vanished temple; excavation in 1969 exposed an octagonal stepped mound, and it is now read as a Nara-period cremation burial. Set beside the pagoda, it shows how busy this corner of old Kōzuke was in the eighth and ninth centuries. The ruins of Yamagami Castle, a prefectural historic site, lie on the same plateau and are now a park.

Travelers with children often pair the visit with Gunma Insect World, a large prefectural nature park nearby. The carved Buddhist relief at Seki, a triad cut into a block of volcanic agglomerate, is another prefectural property in the district. Central Kiryu, with its preserved streets of textile-merchant houses, lies further east and makes a natural second stop for a full day in the area.