Hokyoin Tower

The Tallest Hokyointo in Japan

The Hokyointo (宝篋印塔, Hōkyōintō) at Fukada in Usuki City, Oita Prefecture, is a stone pagoda of the late Kamakura period designated a national Important Cultural Property on 17 September 1954. It is known locally as the Hiyoshi-to (日吉塔), and it stands at the northern edge of the Mangetsuji temple grounds with a bamboo grove closing the view behind it.

A hokyointo is a reliquary form. The name comes from the Hokyoin dharani sutra, and the type traces back to the eighty-four thousand metal pagodas said to have been commissioned by Qian Hongchu, king of Wuyue in tenth-century China, in imitation of King Ashoka's stupas. The form reached Japan around the middle of the Heian period and settled into a standard shape during the Kamakura period. By then the name attached to the shape rather than to the contents, so a hokyointo need not hold that particular sutra.

What distinguishes this one is scale. Usuki City records the total height as 4.09 metres; the official Usuki Stone Buddhas site measures 4.2 metres from the pedestal. Either figure makes it the tallest known example of the type in Japan. The two measurements differ in where they start, and neither the Agency for Cultural Affairs register nor the city gives a reconciled dimension.

Five Stones and a Peculiar Detail

The pagoda is cut from tuff, the soft volcanic stone that made the Usuki cliff carvings possible in the first place. It is assembled from five large blocks: the base, the body, the canopy roof, and the finial above.

Then comes the detail that stone specialists point to. The four corner projections on the canopy, called sumikazari, are normally carved from the same block as the roof itself. Here they are separate stones. Whoever set this pagoda up chose to add complexity where every other builder simplified, and the reason is not recorded.

Each of the four faces of the base carries two kozama, the recessed cusped panels that give a plinth its rhythm. The body of the pagoda is cut in the form of a zushi, a miniature shrine cabinet, and a deep cavity opens in the underside of its interior. Something was placed there. Sutra scrolls are the usual assumption, and nothing survives to confirm it.

The finial sits slightly off the centre line of the canopy. That could be a setting error, or subsidence over seven centuries. It has not been corrected, and the proportions of the whole hold together anyway; the carving is confident and the mass is well judged for the height.

Dating an Uninscribed Stone

The pagoda carries no inscription. No date, no donor, no carver. Everything said about when it was made rests on the shape of the stone.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs assigns it to the late Kamakura period and gives a span of 1275 to 1332. Usuki City's own commentary is more cautious, placing it no later than the middle of the Kamakura period. Interpretive material at Mangetsuji points to the second half of the thirteenth century. The three readings overlap but do not agree, and the register maintained by the Agency takes precedence in this article where they diverge.

The nickname carries its own information. Hiyoshi-to refers to the Hiyoshi shrine that served as guardian deity of Mangetsuji, sited on the rise above the Furuzono group of stone Buddhas. A pagoda named for the tutelary shrine of a temple was most likely raised as part of that temple's development, to hold scripture and to protect the precinct.

The Gold That Was Not There

A rhyme attached itself to this pagoda: where the morning sun strikes and the evening sun shines, a thousand cups of gold and a thousand of vermilion lie beneath. Buried treasure verses of this kind circulate all over rural Japan, and they are almost never acted upon.

In November 1951 an elderly man from Tsukumi acted on this one. He dug up a rice paddy about twenty metres below the pagoda. There was no gold. What came out instead were fragments of wood and old roof tiles.

Those tiles turned out to matter. Mangetsuji lost its records in the Tensho era, and the origins of both the temple and the cliff carvings above it remain unresolved. Datable building material from the site is scarce enough that a failed treasure hunt became a source. Later excavation west and south of the present hall found foundation stones from two periods, a Kamakura-era building roughly eleven metres square overlaid by a Muromachi-era one, and an Edo-period record describes a Shakado hall of seven bays standing there with doubled foundation stones.

What Else Is in the Precinct

The pagoda does not stand alone. Mangetsuji holds a cluster of stone works, and the walk between them takes only a few minutes.

Two Nio guardian figures known as the Kihara stone Buddhas stand near the entrance, buried to the thigh, thought to have flanked the old temple gate. Both have lost their noses completely, scraped away over generations by people who believed the powder cured epidemic disease. The faces that remain are broad and good-humoured. They are dated to the end of the Kamakura period or into the Muromachi.

Two seated stone figures east of the hall are known by tradition as the Manano Choja and his wife, and a third as the priest Renjo, who legend credits with creating the cliff carvings. All three attributions are traditional rather than documented. A five-storey stone pagoda nearby carries an inscription recording its erection in 1315 by a priest of the esoteric schools for his seniors and his late parents; it is a Usuki City designated property. A large cedar at the edge of the grounds is said to have been planted by Tamatsu-hime of the same legend cycle.

Visiting

The pagoda sits within the special historic site boundary of the Usuki cliff Buddhas, which occupy a shallow valley about twenty minutes by bus from JR Usuki Station on the Nippo Line. Take the service bound for Oita Kencho-mae or Mie and get off at the Usuki Sekibutsu stop; the fare is 200 yen. From Oita Station the same ride takes about an hour and ten minutes. By car it is five minutes from the Usuki interchange on the Higashi-Kyushu Expressway, and free parking holds eighty cars and eight coaches. Usuki Station lends bicycles at no charge, and the ride out takes about forty minutes.

The cliff Buddhas themselves are ticketed: 550 yen for adults from high school age, 270 yen for primary and junior high school pupils, open daily from 9:00 with last admission at 16:30. The viewing route climbs a hill by steps and ramps, passing a designated pair of gorinto stone pagodas on the way. Mangetsuji lies beyond the far end of the park, past the lotus ponds, and the hokyointo stands at the north end of its grounds. No separate charge is set for the pagoda itself. Anyone arriving outside the hours of the Buddha route should confirm access on the day at the site office on 0972-65-3300.

The lotus ponds below the carvings flower through July and August, and the blooms open with the dawn, peaking between eight and nine in the morning. Visiting early solves two problems at once: the flowers are open and the low sun rakes across the pagoda's stonework from the east, which is when the kozama panels read most clearly.