Hokyoin Tower

A Granite Stupa Dated 1314 at Dōōji, Kurashiki

The Hokyoin Tower (宝篋印塔, Hōkyōin-tō) at Dōōji in Tsujita, Mabi-chō, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture, is a late Kamakura-period stone stupa inscribed with a date equivalent to 1314, and it was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on 29 May 1965. Locally it goes by the name Dōōji Hōkyōin-tō, after the old place name that still clings to this corner of Tsujita.

It is carved from granite and stands 3.3 meters tall overall. Okayama Prefecture notes that all four of its parts survive together: the base, the body, the stepped cap, and the slender finial. Among dated examples of the type anywhere in the prefecture, it is the largest.

A hōkyōin-tō takes its name from the Hōkyōin Darani, a Buddhist incantation text that such towers were first built to enshrine. In Japan the form settled into a standard shape during the Kamakura period and came to be raised as a memorial or grave marker. A square body sits on a square base; above it, a cap built up in steps carries four ear-like corner projections, and a ringed spire rises from the top. The Hokyoin Tower at Dōōji keeps every element of that scheme.

Why the Hokyoin Tower Was Designated

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Hokyoin Tower as a dated stone stupa that shows the typical manner of the Kamakura period. It became an Important Cultural Property in 1965, listed as a single tower.

The agency's database transcribes the inscription as the twelfth day of the seventh month of Shōwa 3, a year of the wood tiger in the sixty-year cycle. This Shōwa (正和) is an era of 1312 to 1317 and has nothing to do with the twentieth-century Shōwa of Emperor Hirohito; its third year is 1314. Stone monuments are usually dated by style alone, and those estimates can drift by decades. Here the day of dedication is cut into the stone.

Kurashiki City sums up the character of the piece as plain but massive, weighty rather than refined, and reads in it the temper of the Kamakura age. It is a tower that impresses through bulk more than through finish.

The surrounding hamlet still carries the name Dōōji, and Okayama Prefecture considers it likely that the tower once stood within the precinct of a temple of that name. In the Kamakura period this district formed part of Sono-higashi-no-shō, an estate held by the imperial house, and during the Nanboku-chō period it was donated to Chōfukuji, a temple in the old province of Yamashiro around Kyoto. The temple buildings are gone. The tower is what remains of worship on this estate seven centuries ago.

Reading the Inscriptions on the Hokyoin Tower

The date and the name of a fundraising monk

According to Kurashiki City, the base of the Hokyoin Tower is left plain on all four sides except for the front, which carries the date and a short line stating that the kanjin holy man Kakuen raised it (勧進聖人覚圓起立之). Kanjin was the practice of soliciting donations from a wide circle of people to fund temple buildings, statues, and bridges, and the monks who led such campaigns were called kanjin hijiri.

That line changes how the tower reads. It was not the private monument of one wealthy patron but a work paid for by many contributors, organized by an itinerant monk. Quarrying, hauling, and stacking granite blocks to a height of more than 3 meters would have required considerable labor.

The characters have been exposed for over 700 years and are shallow now. Low, raking light in the early morning or late afternoon brings the strokes out best.

Names on four faces

Each face of the body is carved with the name of a buddha or bodhisattva. Walk once around the tower and you will find a different name on every side. With the base left blank, the lettered body becomes the natural focus of the eye.

Scale

At 3.3 meters, the finial tops out well above head height for anyone standing at the base. Weathering has roughened the granite, and the corner projections of the cap flare outward against the sky. Standing beside it, the prefecture's claim that this is the largest dated hōkyōin-tō in Okayama is easy to believe.

Visiting the Hokyoin Tower at Dōōji

The Hokyoin Tower stands outdoors, and Okayama Prefecture lists it as open to view freely. Neither the city nor the prefecture publishes opening hours or an admission fee, and their notices mention no restriction on photography. The tower belongs to the Dōōji district community and sits among homes and fields, so please view it from the road and stay off private land.

The nearest station is Kiyone, served by the JR Hakubi Line and the Ibara Railway Ibara Line. The tower lies northwest of the station, about 2.6 kilometers away by road, or roughly 35 minutes on foot (an estimate from mapping data). Neither the city nor the prefecture lists dedicated parking.

For current conditions at the site, the Cultural Properties Protection Division of the Kurashiki City Board of Education can be reached at 086-426-3851 (Japanese).