Kudaraji Temple Three-Storied Pagoda

A Kamakura Pagoda in a Village of Rice Fields

The three-storied pagoda of Kudaraji (百濟寺三重塔, Kudaraji Sanjū-no-tō; the temple name is also written 百済寺) in Ōaza Kudara, Kōryō Town, Kitakatsuragi District, Nara Prefecture, is a late Kamakura-period structure designated an Important Cultural Property on 14 April 1906. It stands about twenty-three metres tall in a hamlet surrounded by paddy fields, and it is visible from several hundred metres away across open ground.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the form as sangen sanjū tōba, a three-storied pagoda three bays wide at the base, roofed in hongawara tiling. The dating given is late Kamakura, a span the database sets at 1275 to 1332. Kōryō Town's own register of designated properties uses the same period. Several regional guides place the pagoda in the middle Kamakura period instead, so the two attributions circulate side by side; the primary record supports the later reading.

The first storey is the level to study. A veranda with a railing wraps the base. The central bay holds a plank door of hashibami construction, with battens set across the grain to keep the panel flat, and the flanking bays carry renjimado lattice windows of the blind type, backed rather than open. Above the central bay sits a single kentozuka strut; the flanking bays are left empty. The upper two storeys carry railings of their own and traces of pigment.

The Temple Behind the Pagoda

Kudaraji's founding date and circumstances are unknown. What survives is the pagoda, a small main hall, and a tradition that has been steadily dismantled by archaeology.

That tradition holds this to be the site of Kudara Ōdera, the great state temple recorded in the Nihon Shoki under the eleventh year of Emperor Jomei (639), built beside the Kudara River along with a palace, and later moved and renamed until it became Daianji in the Nara capital. The identification is old: a topographical work of 1681 already treats Kōryō's Kudara as the original site. Doubts are almost as old. No evidence shows the place name existed here in antiquity, no ancient roof tiles have been recovered nearby, and the location sits far out in the Nara Basin while every other Asuka-period palace site clusters near Asuka. Excavations at Kibiike Haiji in Sakurai City from 1997 onward produced a temple compound of the right scale and date, and that site is now the leading candidate.

The pagoda's value rests on its architecture rather than on the legend. It is a wayō building, working in the Japanese manner rather than the imported Zen or Great Buddha styles, and its proportions are close enough to the three-storied pagoda at Kōfukuji for the comparison to be routine among specialists.

Its history since is a history of repairs. The finial was rebuilt in 1675 (Enpō 3), and at 8.39 metres it runs long for an Edo-period replacement. Two further repairs followed during the Edo period. By the Meiji era the temple had lost its resident clergy and the building deteriorated badly. A full dismantling and reassembly in 1930 (Shōwa 5) saved it. Published heights differ slightly between sources, at 22.97 and 23.27 metres, most likely reflecting different measuring conventions.

Administration passed to the neighbouring Kasuga Wakamiya Shrine, whose office descends from Naka-no-bō, one of the six sub-temples Kudaraji maintained in the Keichō era. Temple duties are handled from Taimadera Sainan-in.

Getting In, and Getting There

The grounds are open, free and unstaffed at all hours. The pagoda and the shrine share one precinct, and the approach passes under a stone myōjin torii with the pagoda framed beyond it, an arrangement produced by centuries of combined worship and left intact after the Meiji separation of Shinto and Buddhism.

The interior is a different matter and requires paperwork. To enter the pagoda, or the main hall, applicants submit a form to the Cultural Properties Preservation and Utilisation Division of the Kōryō Town Board of Education at least two weeks before the intended date, by fax, post or email. Visits run between 10:00 and 15:30 and are limited to one hour. Staff open the doors and nothing more; commentary requires a separate guide application. No visits are arranged from 20 December to 10 January, and requests are declined when storm warnings are in force or expected. Permission depends on the caretaker's availability and is confirmed after the form is received.

The town asks individuals and small groups to use the temple's ritual days instead, when no application is needed: the Kudara-e service on 15 April, from 10:00 to 12:00, and the memorial service on 15 August.

Beside the pagoda lies a pond cut in the shape of the Sanskrit syllable ban, which stands for Dainichi Nyorai. Local tradition attributes the digging to Kūkai in 823, when he is said to have found the temple in decline. Two more ponds in the area, at Yorakuji in the same town and Jinrakuji in Tawaramoto, are shaped as un and a, and the three are counted together as a set. A stone stele near the water carries a Man'yōshū poem by Yamabe no Akahito that names the plain of Kudara.

The main hall goes by the name Taishokkan and holds a Bishamonten image. Tradition says the building was moved from Tanzan Shrine, though Kōryō Town's register dates it to the Edo period and designated it as a town cultural property on 18 March 1998. It is not normally open.

Public transport is limited. The town lists the pagoda under the Kōryō-chō Yakuba-mae bus stop on the Nara Kotsu network; the walk from there takes roughly twenty minutes. There is free parking and a public toilet beside the adjoining Kudaraji Park. Photography from the grounds is unrestricted, and the north side of the park gives the clean long view of the pagoda above the fields.