Hofukuji Zendo

Hofukuji Zen Hall: An 1814 Meditation Hall Where Zazen Continues Today

Northwest of the abbot's quarters at Hofukuji in Soja City, Okayama Prefecture, a low tiled hall faces south across a walled forecourt. This is the zendo, the meditation hall, built in 1814 (Bunka 11) and later repaired around 1906 and 1965. It measures 11 meters across the front and 8.1 meters deep, with a hip-and-gable roof entered from the gable end and a small canopy, or kohai, sheltering the entrance. A well is attached at the rear.

The facade tells you at once what kind of building this is. At the center are sliding doors with paper panels above a wooden skirt; on either side open the flame-shaped cusped windows called kato-mado, a signature of Zen architecture. Inside, raised platforms known as tan run along the left and right walls. Monks sit in meditation on these platforms, and in stricter times slept on them as well. The central aisle, two bays wide, is floored with square tiles laid on the diagonal, and a small shrine cabinet stands at its heart.

Hofukuji, formally Iyama Hofukuji, is a Rinzai Zen temple of the Tofukuji school, remembered above all as the boyhood training place of the painter Sesshu (1420-1506). The medieval compound burned in 1575 during the Bitchu wars, leaving only the three-story pagoda of 1376. The present zendo belongs to the Edo-period rebuilding and preserves the classic form of a meditation hall with unusual completeness.

Why the Zen Hall Was Registered

The hall was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property on April 28, 2009, under number 33-0215, on the criterion of a structure whose design offers a model for others. Purpose-built meditation halls of the Edo period survive in far smaller numbers than main halls or gates, and this one keeps its essential arrangement: the tan platforms, the tiled center, the cusped windows lighting the sitters from the side.

Repairs in the Meiji era and in the mid-Showa years kept the building sound without erasing its character, so it documents both the original carpentry of 1814 and the continuous care of a working monastery.

What to Look For, and How to Sit

From the forecourt, note how the gable faces you head-on; the hall is entered through its narrow end, which lets the long side walls hold unbroken rows of platforms within. The kato-mado windows are best in the morning, when low light picks out their curved heads.

This is not only a building to look at. Hofukuji has long held a zazen session open to the public on the second Sunday of each month except August, with no reservation required. Schedules can change, so check with the temple before you plan a visit around it. Sitting even once on the tatami where generations of monks have faced the wall gives the architecture a meaning no explanation can.

Sesshu himself would have known an earlier hall on these grounds. The famous story of the boy tied to a pillar, drawing a rat with his tears, is set at this temple, and the discipline that story describes is exactly the life the zendo was built to house.