Chion-in Seishido

The Oldest Building at Chion-in

The Seishi-dō dates to 1530, which makes it the oldest surviving structure on the grounds of Chion-in, one of the largest temple complexes in Kyoto. It sits on a rise of land east of the great worship hall, reached by a steep stone staircase that climbs away from the crowds gathering below. Most visitors to Chion-in come for the towering Sanmon gate and the vast Mieidō at the center of the complex. Far fewer make the short climb to this quieter hall, even though the temple's story begins here rather than down on the main terrace.

The ground itself holds that earliest history. This is the site of the Ōtani retreat where Hōnen (1133–1212), founder of the Jōdo, or Pure Land, school of Japanese Buddhism, spent his final years. He taught the nembutsu here, the practice of reciting the name of Amida Buddha, and he died on this spot in 1212. His disciples raised a memorial hall over his grave, and that act of devotion grew over the centuries into the head temple of the Pure Land school. The modest building on the hill is, in a real sense, where Chion-in started.

The hall standing today is a reconstruction. Fire destroyed earlier buildings on the site more than once, and the present structure was rebuilt in 1530, during the late Muromachi period. Temple records attribute the rebuilding to Tokuyo Kōnen, the twenty-seventh abbot. What rose then has remained, while almost everything else around it has burned and been built again.

From Image Hall to Seishi-dō

The hall did not always carry its present name. When it was rebuilt in 1530, it served as the Mieidō, the hall enshrining the founder's portrait, and it held a sculpted image of Hōnen. That arrangement changed in the early seventeenth century, when the Tokugawa shoguns adopted Chion-in as their family temple and rebuilt the complex on a far grander scale. A much larger Mieidō rose on the terrace below, and Hōnen's portrait was moved down to it.

The older hall on the hill then received a seated statue of the bodhisattva Seishi, known in Sanskrit as Mahāsthāmaprāpta, and took the name it bears today. The choice of deity is the unusual part. Halls that enshrine Seishi as their principal image are rare across Japan. The Pure Land tradition regards Hōnen as an earthly manifestation of this very bodhisattva, a belief preserved in his childhood name, Seishi-maru. Placing a Seishi image on the ground where the founder had lived and died honored him in the form Pure Land believers understood him to embody. For this reason the building also goes by a second name, Honji-dō, the hall of the original nature.

The Seishi statue inside is a Kamakura-period work, and it carries its own protected status. It was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2003, separately from the building that shelters it. The hall and its principal image are therefore two distinct cultural properties under one roof.

Designation and Survival

The Seishi-dō was named an Important Cultural Property on April 5, 1899, placing it among the earliest architectural designations made under Japan's first modern heritage laws. Part of what gives the building its weight is simply that it is still here. In 1633 a fire tore through Chion-in and consumed most of its halls. Only three structures came through the blaze: the Seishi-dō, the sutra repository, and the Sanmon gate. Nearly everything a visitor sees across the rest of the complex today is a seventeenth-century reconstruction raised after that fire. The Seishi-dō predates those buildings by roughly a century.

In form it is a square hall, seven bays wide and seven bays deep, measuring about 21 meters across the front and 20 meters in depth. It stands a single story high beneath a hip-and-gable roof, called irimoya, finished in the formal ceramic tiling known as hongawarabuki. The proportions are restrained and the detailing is sober, in keeping with the architecture of its period rather than the ornate Tokugawa work that surrounds it. Set against the scale of the later Sanmon and Mieidō, the hall reads as an older, plainer voice in the complex.

What to Look For

The climb is the first thing. The staircase that leads up to the Seishi-dō is steep, and the change in air at the top is noticeable. The upper precinct stays quiet even when the main halls below are busy, and the sense of arriving somewhere set apart is part of why pilgrims have long treated this as sacred ground.

Above the entrance hangs a framed plaque reading "Chion-kyōin." The calligraphy is the work of Emperor Go-Nara, the 105th emperor, who reigned in the sixteenth century, and the temple's name traces back to these characters. Looking up to read it is a small act that connects the hall to the imperial court of its own era.

Behind and above the hall lies Hōnen's mausoleum, the highest point in the precinct, where the founder's grave is enclosed within a railed enclosure entered through a Chinese-style gate. Below the mausoleum's slope is a small pond called Shiunsui, "purple cloud water." Temple tradition says that at the moment of Hōnen's death a purple cloud appeared over the water and a fragrance filled the air. In early summer the same pond draws the Mori-ao frog, a tree frog noted for laying its foam egg masses on branches above the water, and the calls carry through the precinct in May and June.

Around the Hall and Getting There

The Seishi-dō sits within the larger grounds of Chion-in, so a visit naturally folds into a tour of the whole complex. The Sanmon gate at the entrance is a National Treasure and one of the largest wooden gates in Japan, and the Mieidō, also a National Treasure, anchors the central terrace. The temple's great bell, among the heaviest in the country, is famous for the New Year's Eve ringing that draws crowds each year. From the upper precinct around the Seishi-dō, paths lead down through the rest of the grounds at an easy pace.

The temple lies in the Higashiyama district on the eastern side of central Kyoto, close to the Gion entertainment quarter. The simplest approach is the city bus to the Chion-in-mae stop, about a five-minute walk from the gate. From the subway, Higashiyama Station is roughly an eight-minute walk, and Keihan Gion-Shijō Station is about ten minutes on foot. The grounds are free to enter, with separate admission charged only for the abbot's quarters garden and the Yūzen-en garden.