Wooden Standing Statue of Thousand Armed Kannon (located in

A Ninth-Century Kannon Carved from a Single Tree

The figure rises 266 centimeters, its forty arms fanning out from the shoulders and a crown of small heads gathered above the brow. This is the standing Thousand-Armed Kannon of Koryu-ji in the Uzumasa district of western Kyoto, a wooden image worked from one block of cypress in the ninth century. The arms count is not the literal thousand of the deity's name. Forty arms, by an old convention, each save twenty-five realms, and forty times twenty-five gives the thousand. Eleven faces ring the head, the iconography that gives the figure its full title, the Eleven-Headed Thousand-Armed Kannon.

The statue carries the official designation "located in the Lecture Hall," a phrase that records where it once stood rather than where a visitor finds it now. For centuries it occupied the northwest corner of the Lecture Hall, the building locals still call the Red Hall. Since 1982 it has stood instead in the temple's Reihoden, a purpose-built gallery a few minutes deeper into the grounds.

Why It Became a National Treasure

Koryu-ji keeps a ninth-century inventory of its holdings, the Shizai Kotai Jitsuroku-cho, which is itself a National Treasure document. Among the images recorded as standing in the main golden hall is an eleven-headed, forty-armed Kannon described as a sandalwood image about eight shaku tall, roughly 240 centimeters. Scholars take this entry to refer to the statue described here, which would place its making in the early Heian period, the ninth century. The identification rests on the record and on the style of the carving rather than on a dated inscription, so it is held as the most likely reading rather than a certainty.

What sets the work apart technically is its construction. The body was cut from a single block of cypress, the ichiboku method that dominated early Heian sculpture before workshops shifted to assembling figures from several joined pieces. The single-block approach gives the surface a dense, unbroken quality and limits how large a figure can be, which makes a standing image of this height an ambitious piece of carving. The temple's records describe the original as a sandalwood image, the prized imported material of continental Buddhist art, and the cypress here was worked in that tradition, standing in for sandalwood that was scarce in Japan.

The figure was first protected as a National Treasure under the older system in 1904, then designated again under the present law in 1953, when the postwar framework redefined the highest rank of cultural property. The deity itself, Senju Kannon, is the form of Avalokiteshvara whose many arms express a vow to reach every suffering being at once, each hand holding an implement or forming a gesture of aid.

What to Look For in the Reihoden

Inside the gallery the statue stands among the temple's largest figures, set across the room from the celebrated seated Maitreya that is registered as Japan's National Treasure number one. Three tall images face that famous bodhisattva. The Thousand-Armed Kannon described here takes the position on the right, its expression grave and composed, the face of early Heian carving at its most austere.

Beside it stands a colossal Fukukenjaku Kannon, a second National Treasure that rises past three meters and once shared the Lecture Hall with this figure. Between the two sits a third Thousand-Armed Kannon, a seated version bearing an inscription dated 1012. That seated image is built from several joined blocks of wood, an early example of the assembled technique, and comparing the two Kannon side by side shows the shift in method across roughly two centuries. The standing figure is the older and is carved from one tree; the seated one is the later and is pieced together.

Look closely at how the arms are arranged. The two principal hands meet at the chest, and the remaining arms spread in ranks behind them, each originally holding an attribute. Time has worn some of the smaller hands, and the gilding and color that once covered the surface have largely gone, leaving the grain of the wood and the carver's cuts more visible than they would have been when the figure was new. The faces above the main head are small and intent, easy to miss from a distance and worth stepping closer to study.

Visiting Koryu-ji and the Uzumasa District

Koryu-ji is the oldest temple in Kyoto, founded in the early seventh century by the Hata, an immigrant clan that managed much of the area's early wealth. Tradition holds that Hata no Kawakatsu received a Buddhist image from Prince Shotoku and built the first hall to house it. The Reihoden gallery, where the Thousand-Armed Kannon now stands, also holds the two famous Maitreya figures, the gentle crowned one and the so-called weeping Maitreya, along with a set of twelve guardian generals counted among the oldest wooden examples of their kind.

The Lecture Hall itself, the Red Hall, can be seen on the way in. Rebuilt in 1165, it is one of the few Heian-period buildings left in the city, and through its doors visitors can make out the seated Amida and its attendant bodhisattvas, though the interior is not open to enter. The grounds sit beside the Toei Kyoto Studio Park, a working film set turned theme park, so the neighborhood pairs an ancient temple with one of the city's more modern attractions.

Reaching the temple is straightforward. The Randen tram on the Arashiyama Line stops at Uzumasa-Koryuji station directly in front of the gate, and the JR Sagano Line reaches Uzumasa station about a ten-minute walk away. Entry to the temple grounds is free, while the Reihoden charges a separate admission of around 800 yen for adults. Hours run from 9 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon for most of the year, closing half an hour earlier from December through February, so checking the current schedule before a visit is wise.