Shōonji Temple Treasure Pagoda

A Pagoda Dated to the Last Ten Days of a Lunar Month in 1316

Shōonji Hōtō (照恩寺宝塔, also written Shoonji Hōtō), the stone pagoda in the precinct of Shōonji temple at Miidera, Musashi-machi, Kunisaki City, Oita Prefecture, was carved in 1316 and designated an Important Cultural Property on 23 January 1933. Standing about 2.5 metres high in andesite, it is a Kunisaki-tō, the pedestalled variety of stone pagoda found almost exclusively on this peninsula.

The inscription is unusually precise about time. It reads, in the fifth year of Shōwa (正和, an era of 1312 to 1317 and not to be confused with the modern Shōwa era), the year hinoe-tatsu, in the last ten days of taisō, made. Taisō is one of the twelve ancient pitch-pipe names used as an elegant substitute for a month, and it stands for the first month of the lunar year. The pagoda therefore records not just a year but a ten-day window in the opening month of 1316. Five lines of text run down the side of the body, though weathering has taken most of them beyond reading.

Shōonji today belongs to the Jōdo Shinshū Hongan-ji branch and enshrines Amida Nyorai. That creates an oddity worth pausing over, because the pagoda did not begin here and was not made for a Pure Land temple.

Toppled Into a Pond, Recovered in 1889

The pagoda originally stood on an islet in a pond within the precinct of Tsubaki Hachiman Shrine, a short distance away. When the early Meiji government separated Buddhist institutions from Shinto ones and the haibutsu kishaku movement swept the country's shrines, objects with Buddhist associations were removed from shrine grounds. This one was pushed over and left lying in the water.

It stayed there. In October 1889, Shōonji requested the stone, received it, and re-erected it on the temple's own ground, where it has remained since. The interval means the pagoda spent roughly two decades submerged or half-submerged, which makes its condition remarkable rather than merely good. Assessments consistently rank it among the better-preserved Kunisaki-tō, and the water may in fact have shielded it from the freeze and thaw cycles that erode exposed stone.

Designation came in January 1933, in the same batch as the Iwatoji pagoda of 1283, which carries the oldest date of any inscribed Kunisaki-tō. Those two were the first of the type to receive national protection, decades ahead of the group designated in 1954 and later. Being selected that early is itself a judgement about quality. Guides to the region routinely describe this pagoda as among the finest of the roughly five hundred surviving examples, and Oita Prefecture's tourism office states the case flatly, calling it the most accomplished of the Kunisaki-tō so far identified.

Looking at the Stone Itself

Begin with the body. On a Kunisaki-tō the tōshin is the piece that carries the design, and this one takes the form often compared to a tea caddy: a swelling curve that draws in toward a carved neck at the top rather than meeting the roof stone abruptly. The transition is what separates competent regional stonework from the exceptional kind, and here the curve is continuous, with no flat interval where the mason lost the line.

Below it sits the feature that defines the whole type. A standard hōtō puts the body straight onto a square base. The Kunisaki-tō inserts a pedestal, inverted lotus or lotus seat or both, and that inserted course raises the body and stretches the proportions upward. Above, the finial runs long relative to the roof stone, which reinforces the vertical reading.

The material repays attention as well. Andesite is a volcanic rock, appropriate to a peninsula built from an eroded volcano, and it weathers to a grey surface that shows carved edges well in oblique light. Come in the early morning or the last hours of the afternoon if you want the five lines of inscription to register at all; under a high sun the surface flattens and the traces disappear.

Practical matters are simple. The pagoda stands in the open precinct at 407 Miidera, Musashi-machi, and there is no fixed admission charge; the temple asks that visitors leave an offering as they see fit when they pay their respects. Parking is available on site. Oita Airport is about fifteen minutes away by car, which makes this one of the easiest stone monuments on the peninsula to reach on arrival or before a departing flight, and by bus from Kitsuki Station the trip runs closer to fifty minutes. Photography for personal purposes attracts no posted restriction, though the pagoda sits in an active temple precinct and a word at the temple office before setting up equipment is the courteous course. Telephone enquiries go to 0978-68-0306.

If you are working through the peninsula's Buddhist heritage more broadly, the surrounding Rokugō Manzan network of temples grew under the patronage of Usa Jingū and produced the stone carving culture this pagoda belongs to. Musashi was one of the six original districts that gave the network its name.