The Three Main Parts of Tendai's Book of the Lotus (end of

Block-Printed Tendai Sandaibu Hokke Soki: A Kamakura-Period Window into the Heart of Tendai Buddhism

Tucked away among the treasures of Sairaiji Temple in Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, lies one of Japan's most remarkable testaments to medieval Buddhist scholarship. The Block-Printed Tendai Sandaibu Hokke Soki (版本天台三大部法華疏記) is a set of seventeen woodblock-printed booklets dating to the Kamakura period (1185–1333). Designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan, this rare set preserves a foundational commentary that helped shape East Asian Buddhist thought for over a millennium.

For visitors interested in the origins of Japanese Buddhism, calligraphy, or the history of printing, this work offers a tangible link to the religious and intellectual currents that flowed from China through the Tendai school and into the spiritual life of medieval Japan.

What Is the Hokke Soki?

The Hokke Soki, more formally known as the Hokke Mongu Ki (法華文句記), is a detailed commentary written by the Chinese monk Zhanran (湛然, 711–782), revered in Japan as Myoraku Daishi (妙楽大師). Zhanran was the sixth patriarch of the Chinese Tiantai (Tendai) school and is credited with reviving the tradition during the Tang dynasty.

To understand the Hokke Soki, one must first understand the "Three Great Texts of Tendai" (天台三大部, Tendai Sandaibu) — three foundational works delivered as lectures by Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597), the great systematizer of Tiantai Buddhism known as Tendai Daishi. These three works are the Hokke Gengi (Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra), the Hokke Mongu (Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra), and the Maka Shikan (Great Calming and Contemplation).

Roughly a century and a half after Zhiyi, Zhanran composed three companion commentaries explaining each of these texts in painstaking detail. The Hokke Soki — sometimes called the Hokke Mongu Ki — is his commentary on the Hokke Mongu, which itself unpacks the meaning of the Lotus Sutra phrase by phrase.

The seventeen booklets at Sairaiji Temple comprise this complete commentary, divided across volumes one through ten. Several volumes are further subdivided into "honmatsu" (本末, "primary and supplementary") parts, while volume three is uniquely split into upper, middle, and lower sections. The full title — Hokke Soki, Volume 1 (parts 1 and 2), Volume 2, Volume 3 (upper, middle, lower), Volume 4 (parts 1 and 2), Volume 5 (parts 1 and 2), Volume 6, Volume 7, Volume 8 (parts 1 and 2), Volume 9 (parts 1 and 2), Volume 10 — reflects the rigorous structure of medieval Buddhist scholarship.

The Significance of "Hanpon" — Block Printing in Medieval Japan

The prefix "hanpon" (版本) signals that this is not a hand-copied manuscript but a woodblock-printed edition. In an age when most Buddhist texts in Japan were laboriously copied by hand, the rise of woodblock printing at major temples like Kofukuji in Nara and Mount Koya transformed how Buddhist learning spread.

Printed texts of the Kamakura period are themselves treasures of Japanese cultural history. They preserve the typography, paper, binding techniques, and editorial choices of seven centuries ago. Each printed page reveals the craftsmanship of carvers who incised entire texts, character by character, into wooden blocks. The faintly visible grain of the wood, the controlled bleed of sumi ink, and the texture of the gampi or kozo paper all speak to a printing tradition that flourished in monastic centers across Japan.

Why Was This Work Designated an Important Cultural Property?

The Hokke Soki at Sairaiji was designated an Important Cultural Property on May 6, 1936 (Showa 11), under designation number 477, branch 04, in the category of "Books and Documents" (書跡・典籍). Its value rests on several pillars.

First, the set is remarkably complete. Surviving full sets of the printed Tendai Sandaibu and their commentaries from the Kamakura period are exceedingly rare. At Sairaiji, the entire collection survives as a unified group of 78 booklets, with the Hokke Soki forming the largest single component at 17 booklets.

Second, the work is essential for understanding the doctrinal foundation of Japanese Buddhism. Tendai teachings, transmitted by Saicho (最澄, 767–822) from Mount Tiantai in China to Mount Hiei in Japan, became the seedbed from which Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren, and other Japanese Buddhist schools emerged. The Hokke Soki was a core curricular text for monks training at temple academies.

Third, the set carries scholarly value as an example of medieval printing technology. The block-printed Buddhist canon represents a major achievement in pre-modern East Asian publishing, and surviving Kamakura impressions like these allow scholars to reconstruct the lineage of textual transmission and identify regional variations among temple printing centers.

Highlights and Points of Interest

Although the Hokke Soki is generally kept in conservation storage and is not on permanent display, the deeper one understands its significance, the richer a visit to Sairaiji Temple becomes.

The seventeen booklets are bound in the orihon (折本) accordion-fold style typical of printed Buddhist texts, with sturdy outer covers protecting pages of densely set text. Each "jo" (帖) or booklet contains tightly packed columns of Chinese characters in the standard 17-character-per-line format favored by medieval Japanese temple printers.

Sairaiji itself is the special head temple (Bekkaku Honzan, 別格本山) of the Tendai Shinsei sect (天台真盛宗). Founded in 1490 by Shinsei Shonin, also honored with the titles Enkai Kokushi and Jisho Daishi, the temple has long been a guardian of Tendai textual scholarship. The mountain name Ryuhozan (龍宝山, Mountain of the Dragon Treasure) hints at the wealth of cultural assets preserved here. Beyond the Hokke Soki, the temple is home to a Kamakura-period silk painting of the Amida Raigo, another silk painting depicting Prince Shotoku Lecturing on the Shrimala Sutra, a Nara-period Daihannyakyo, and a Song-dynasty annotated Mahaparinirvana Sutra — all designated Important Cultural Properties.

One of the most poignant chapters in the temple's history concerns survival. On the night of July 28, 1945 — eighteen days before the end of the Second World War — incendiary bombing destroyed roughly eighty percent of central Tsu, including most of Sairaiji's buildings. Yet the wooden treasure storehouse holding the temple's principal images and texts somehow escaped the flames. The fact that visitors can still encounter these Kamakura treasures today is something of a small miracle.

Visiting Sairaiji Temple

Sairaiji sits in the heart of Tsu City, the prefectural capital of Mie. The current main hall, rebuilt in 1993 after the post-war provisional structure became too damaged, presides over a spacious precinct that includes eight subordinate temples (tatchu) and a kindergarten run by the temple community.

Reaching the temple is straightforward. From JR or Kintetsu Tsu Station, take a bus bound for Mie Kaikan (about 8–10 minutes) and walk roughly five minutes from the stop. By car, the temple is about ten minutes from the Tsu Interchange of the Ise Expressway, with ample free parking on site.

While viewing the Hokke Soki itself requires special advance arrangement and is generally limited to scholarly contexts, the temple grounds are quietly welcoming and offer a calm retreat from the busy streets of central Tsu. Stepping through the gate into the precinct, one encounters the layered atmosphere of a temple that has been continuously rebuilt and revived across more than five centuries.

What to See Around the Temple

A visit to Sairaiji combines beautifully with several other cultural sites in Tsu. Tsu Kannon Temple (Tsu Kanon, 津観音), counted among Japan's three great Kannon temples alongside those in Asakusa and Osu, is a short walk away and was the very site where Shinsei Shonin first preached in the area in 1490, leading to Sairaiji's foundation. The bustling shopping arcade nearby preserves the feeling of a traditional Japanese castle town.

Tsu Castle Ruins Park (Tsu-jo Ato), about a fifteen-minute walk from Sairaiji, marks the site of the castle once held by Oda Nobukane, brother of Oda Nobunaga. The grounds today are a pleasant green space with seasonal cherry blossoms.

For visitors wanting deeper context, the Mie Prefectural Museum (MieMu), located a short bus ride away, offers exhibitions on the natural and cultural history of the region. Senjuji Temple (専修寺) in nearby Isshinden — itself a National Treasure complex of the Jodo Shinshu Takada school — makes a rewarding half-day excursion combining two of the prefecture's most important Buddhist sites.

For those interested in the coast, the historic Akogi area, where Sairaiji originally stood before the great earthquake of 1498, lies along Ise Bay and preserves traces of its old fishing village atmosphere.