Hofukuji Temple

A Zen Monastery Remembered for Sesshu

Hofukuji Temple (寶福寺, also written 宝福寺 and known as Iyama Hōfukuji) is a temple of the Tofukuji branch of Rinzai Zen in Ijirino, Soja City, Okayama Prefecture, where 24 structures built between the Edo and Meiji eras, after the temple burned in the civil wars, were each entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2009. The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists them under the older character 寶, while local signs and tourism pages mostly use 宝.

Soja City's account has the temple starting out in the Tendai school and turning to Rinzai Zen in the mid-Kamakura period, earlier than any other temple in Okayama. It kept close ties with Tofukuji, its head temple in Kyoto, and at its height it is said to have counted 55 sub-temples and study halls on the mountain and more than 300 branch temples beyond it.

What most visitors know about Hofukuji, though, is a story about a child. The ink painter Sesshu is believed to have been born in 1420 at Akahama, now part of Soja, and entered the temple as a boy. Local tradition says that he drew a mouse here with his own tears, and the tale is tied to the abbot's quarters. Sesshu later moved to Shokokuji in Kyoto and studied ink painting under Shubun.

The oldest building on the grounds is the three-storied pagoda on the rise behind the Buddha Hall. An ink inscription dated 1376 was found during its dismantling repair, and Soja City describes it as the second-oldest pagoda in Okayama Prefecture. The pagoda was designated by the national government in 1927 and is an Important Cultural Property, protected under a different system from the 24 registered structures.

Rebuilding After 1575, Registering in 2009

Fighting in the Bitchu region in 1575 destroyed much of Hofukuji. Soja City's own pages disagree about what survived: the pagoda page calls the pagoda the only building to escape the fire, while the page on the registered group says most buildings burned except the Buddha Hall and the pagoda. Either way, the Buddha Hall that stands today is dated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs to 1735, a product of the rebuilding.

From the Edo period onward, local lords, merchants from nearby towns and a line of abbots paid for the halls to go back up one by one. The result is a full Zen monastic layout, with the Buddha Hall, abbot's quarters, priests' quarters and meditation hall joined by a bell tower, sutra repository and founder's hall, and by wells, stone walls and a stone bridge. Soja City presents it as a representative early modern Zen temple in the prefecture.

Registration came in 2 rounds. On January 8, 2009, 6 structures were registered: the abbot's quarters, the Entrance Hall and Dining Hall, the priests' quarters, the treasure storehouse and 2 wells. On April 28, 2009, 18 more followed, among them the Buddha Hall, the Main Gate, the sutra repository, the bell tower, the meditation hall, the study hall, the founder's hall and the buildings of the Akibagu shrine. Their numbers run without a gap from 33-0204, the abbot's quarters, to 33-0227, the Akibagu stone walls.

The dates spread wide. The Senjakusei well is said to be the oldest thing on the grounds and is placed in the early Edo period; among structures with a known year, the Buddha Hall of 1735 comes first. Then come the sutra repository of 1764, the treasure storehouse of 1793, the founder's hall gate and its walls of 1806, the meditation hall and the Tenzo well of 1814, the bell tower of 1818 and the Dokubokkyo bridge of 1828, and finally the Akibagu's stone shrines of 1892, its water basin pavilion of 1894 and the late-Meiji Main Gate. Walking the grounds, you move through the order of the rebuilding from the early Edo period to the end of Meiji.

Finding Your Way Around

The temple faces east. At its eastern edge stands the Main Gate, a two-story gate of late Meiji, with late-Edo stone walls and white plastered earthen walls on either side of the steps below it. East of the steps lies the Dokubokkyo, a small granite bridge. Pass through the gate and the Buddha Hall faces you, with the pagoda on the high ground behind it: gate, hall and pagoda line up roughly on one east-west axis.

Northwest of the Buddha Hall, on a raised terrace, is the white-walled sutra repository; the Senjakusei well is to the southwest. Walk north and you reach the domestic heart of the monastery, where the abbot's quarters, the Entrance Hall and Dining Hall and the priests' quarters stand side by side facing south, the abbot's quarters behind its own earthen wall. The bell tower, the Tenzo and middle wells, the treasure storehouse, the study hall and the meditation hall cluster around them.

South of the Buddha Hall, on a platform raised above the rest of the grounds, is the founder's hall enclosure. Its north-facing gate, the steps in front of it and the stone and earthen walls running off to either side all date from 1806.

Up a long stone stairway in the northwest corner is the Akibagu, a small Shinto shrine precinct kept within the temple. A stone gateway stands partway up; at the top are the basin pavilion and the worship hall, the main sanctuary joined to it by a connecting hall, and a row of 5 stone shrines behind. All of it dates from the Meiji era. Okayama Prefecture notes that the deities Akiba and Konpira are also enshrined as the temple's guardians on the 247.4 m summit of Mount Akiba, the hill behind Hofukuji.

A loop from the gate to the Buddha Hall, north to the abbot's quarters and kitchen, south to the founder's hall and up to the Akibagu takes in all 24 registered structures. Most of the buildings are in daily use, and neither the prefectural nor the city tourism pages announce regular interior openings, so the visit is mainly about exteriors.

Visiting Hofukuji

According to Okayama's official tourism site, the grounds are open from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. No admission charge is listed; the only fees are for zazen. The regular sitting is held on the 2nd Sunday of every month except August and costs 500 yen for junior high school students and older. Individual zazen sessions, arranged by phone, cost 1,000 yen for elementary school children and older. The temple's number is 0866-92-0024.

The nearest station is JR Soja, about 30 minutes away on foot or about 10 minutes by car. Drivers come in from the Okayama Soja interchange on the Okayama Expressway, about 15 minutes away. Parking holds 75 cars, and buses and other large vehicles use a second lot on the west side.

For a longer walk, Okayama Prefecture maps a 7.8 km trail that starts at JR Gokei Station, crosses Mount Akiba, drops down to Hofukuji and ends at JR Soja Station. The summit lookout faces south, and on clear days the view is said to reach the mountains of Shikoku.

Autumn color on the grounds usually peaks in mid-November. Neither the temple nor the tourism pages post rules on photographing the buildings, but put the camera away during services and zazen, and keep doorways clear around the abbot's quarters and priests' quarters, where the temple community lives.