Wooden Sitting Statue of Chisho Daishi (Gokotsu Daishi)

A Concealed Portrait of the Monk Enchin

When the Tendai monk Enchin died in 891, the community he had built at Onjo-ji preserved him in an unusual form. His body was cremated, and a seated wooden portrait of him came to hold the remains. That figure, the Onkotsu Daishi, or "Bone Great Teacher," is one of two National Treasure portraits of Enchin kept at the temple in Otsu, on the southwestern shore of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture.

Enchin (814 to 891) was given the posthumous name Chisho Daishi by Emperor Daigo in 927. He served as the fifth head abbot of the Tendai school and founded its Jimon branch, and Onjo-ji, known to most visitors as Mii-dera, is still the head temple of that lineage.

The statue sits in a shrine cabinet inside the Daishido, the founder's hall within the Toin precinct, placed to the left of a second portrait called the Chuson Daishi. The Onkotsu Daishi is the older of the pair. It is thought to date from the closing years of the ninth century, not long after Enchin died, while the central Chuson Daishi is usually placed somewhat later.

Why It Is a National Treasure

Japan listed the figure as an Important Cultural Property in 1900 and raised it to National Treasure status on 22 November 1952. Portrait sculpture of named individuals was uncommon in early Japan, and carved likenesses that survive from the ninth century are rarer still. A portrait made close to the lifetime of its subject, and connected to a founder of a major Buddhist lineage, carries weight that few sculptures of its age can match.

The relic association sets it further apart. Because the figure is said to enshrine Enchin's cremated bones, the temple has long treated it with exceptional reverence and kept it from ordinary view. Photographs are restricted, which is why even scholarly accounts of its appearance remain scarce.

It also belongs to a clear iconographic tradition. Portraits of Enchin across Japan share a tall, almost egg-shaped crown of the head and narrow, half-closed eyes, traits that later generations read as the founder's true face. The companion Chuson Daishi shows these features plainly, and the Onkotsu Daishi follows the same type, shaped while the memory of the living teacher was still fresh.

That memory mattered because the Tendai school had split. After Enchin's death, the rivalry between his followers and those of the earlier master Ennin grew so sharp that Enchin's faction left Mount Hiei and settled at Onjo-ji, forming the Jimon branch in opposition to the Sanmon branch at Enryaku-ji. A portrait holding the founder's remains anchored that identity.

Encountering Enchin's Legacy at the Temple

A visitor should know from the start that the Onkotsu Daishi is a hibutsu, a concealed image, opened only for rare special occasions rather than on any regular schedule. The companion Chuson Daishi is shown once each year, on 29 October, the anniversary of Enchin's death, but the Bone Great Teacher is not part of that annual opening. It is best to come for the founder's wider story rather than for a glimpse of the statue.

That story is unusually well documented. In May 2023, UNESCO added a group of Enchin's papers, the Documents and Books Related to Chisho Daishi Enchin, to its Memory of the World register. The set gathers 56 National Treasures held by Onjo-ji and the Tokyo National Museum, including travel permits called kasho that Tang Chinese officials issued to Enchin in the 850s, sometimes described as among the oldest surviving documents of their kind. Parts of this collection are presented at the temple's cultural property museum, which gives visitors a direct link to the man the hidden portrait commemorates.

The Toin precinct itself rewards a slow walk. Enchin stored the scriptures he carried back from China here, and the row of gates and halls leading to the Daishido marks the historic core of the temple's identity as a center of esoteric Tendai practice.

Around Onjo-ji

Mii-dera spreads across the lower slopes of Mount Nagara above Lake Biwa, and its scale surprises many first-time visitors. The temple has burned and been rebuilt many times through the Genpei wars and later conflicts, which earned it the nickname Temple of the Phoenix.

The main hall, or kondo, enshrines a concealed image of Maitreya and stands as a National Treasure in its own right. Nearby, the temple keeps the Yellow Fudo, a painted image of Fudo Myoo counted among the three great Fudo paintings of Japan and tied directly to a vision Enchin is said to have had during his years of mountain training. The Mii Evening Bell, one of the Eight Views of Omi, is ranked among the country's finest temple bells for its tone.

Walk on to the Kannon-do, the fourteenth station of the Saigoku pilgrimage to thirty-three sites of Kannon, for a wide view over the lake and the city of Otsu. Kyoto lies only a short train ride away, so Mii-dera fits easily into a day that also takes in the lakeshore or nearby Mount Hiei.

Getting here is straightforward. From Miidera Station on the Keihan Ishiyama-Sakamoto line the temple is about a ten-minute walk, and Keihan buses bound for Miidera connect from Otsu Station on the JR Biwako line and Otsukyo Station on the JR Kosei line.