Saidaiji Temple Main Hall

The Main Hall of Saidaiji: A Plank-Walled Buddhist Hall From the Edo Period

Approach Saidaiji from its south gate and the building that holds your gaze is unlike most temple halls in Nara. The walls of the Main Hall are timber. Not plastered earth panels framed in wood, as at almost every other major Buddhist hall in the old capital, but board upon board of bare cypress, the surface broken only by the grid of vertical columns and the deep eaves of a hipped roof. The effect is austere, almost industrial in its frankness, and it is one of the most distinctive sights in the temple precincts west of the Heijō Palace site.

This is the Hondō, or Main Hall, of Saidaiji, head temple of the Shingon Risshū sect. The current building was completed in the early nineteenth century and was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan in 1998 as a representative example of a large-scale Buddhist hall from the late Edo period. It stands directly north of the foundation stones of the East Pagoda, near the heart of what was once a vast eighth-century complex rivalling Tōdaiji on the eastern side of the old capital.

From Imperial Foundation to Eison's Revival

Saidaiji was founded in 765 by Empress Shōtoku, following a vow she had made the previous year for the suppression of the Fujiwara no Nakamaro rebellion. The temple's name literally means "Great Western Temple", a deliberate pairing with the Great Eastern Temple, Tōdaiji. At its height in the Nara period, the precincts contained more than a hundred structures across an area many times larger than the present compound.

Fortunes turned with the move of the capital to Heian-kyō. By the late Heian period the original buildings had largely fallen into ruin. Revival came in the Kamakura period through the monk Eison (1201–1290), a reformer of the Buddhist precepts who made Saidaiji the headquarters of his movement to restore monastic discipline. Eison rebuilt halls, commissioned new images, and turned the temple into a centre of Shingon Risshū teaching. Most of the temple's celebrated sculptures, including the principal image now enshrined in the Hondō, date from his thirteenth-century revival.

A great fire during the Muromachi period destroyed Eison's reconstruction in turn. The present Hondō stands on the site of, and inherits the function of, a hall called the Kōmyō Shingon-dō that had been built after that loss. By the late eighteenth century that hall too was failing, and the temple chose rebuilding over repair.

Construction in the Bunka Era

Work on the new Main Hall began around 1798 (Kansei 10) and was substantially complete by around 1808 (Bunka 5). Older guidebooks sometimes give a construction date of 1752 (Hōreki 2); recent scholarship and the Agency for Cultural Affairs both place the building three to five decades later, in the years just after the turn of the nineteenth century.

The structure measures seven bays across the front and five bays in depth, single-storeyed, with a hipped roof of ceramic hongawara tiles. A three-bay porch (kōhai) projects from both the front and the rear. What truly sets the building apart, however, is what is absent. There is no earthen plaster on the walls at all. Every wall surface is constructed of wooden planking. In the canon of late Edo-period Buddhist architecture, where mud-and-plaster walls were almost universal, this is a striking departure.

The interior is divided into a sanctuary (naijin) and an outer worship space (gejin) wrapping it on the east, west and south sides. At the north of the sanctuary stands the central altar platform (shumidan), with subsidiary altars to the east and west. The miniature shrine (zushi) at the centre of the inner sanctuary is included in the cultural property designation as an attached element (tsuketari) of the building itself.

Why It Was Designated

The Agency for Cultural Affairs cited the hall in 1998 as an outstanding representative of the large-scale Buddhist hall as the form had evolved by the late Edo period. The plank-wall construction is the most obvious distinction, but the designation also recognises the building's restrained ornamentation, the clarity of its proportions, and the way it consciously continues the traditional Buddhist hall format without adopting the showier decorative tendencies common to other temple architecture of its era.

The hall is one of the largest Buddhist structures in the city of Nara built after the medieval period. For visitors familiar with the heavily painted and gilded interiors of many Edo-period temple buildings elsewhere in Japan, the comparative plainness here is informative: this is what a reform-minded Vinaya school chose for its principal hall when given the freedom to rebuild on its own terms.

What to Look For Inside

Pay the admission fee at the temple office and step inside the Hondō through the gejin. The first thing many visitors notice is the lighting. Roughly three hundred small metal lanterns are suspended throughout the interior, casting a soft, layered glow across the platforms and the polished floorboards. The effect is markedly different from the bright clarity of, say, Tōdaiji's Daibutsuden a short distance to the east.

The principal image is a standing Shakyamuni Buddha, carved in 1249 by the sculptor Zenkei and eight other craftsmen, and itself designated an Important Cultural Property. It is a Seiryōji-style image — a faithful copy of the celebrated Sakyamuni statue at Seiryōji in Kyoto's Saga district, which was itself thought to be a copy of an image made in the Buddha's lifetime. The hair is arranged in distinctive curl-bands rather than the more familiar knobbed coils, and the robe falls in concentric arcs across the body. The figure stands about 167 centimetres in height.

To the left of the central altar is the Manjushri group: a Manjushri Bodhisattva riding a lion, accompanied by four attendant figures including the boy-pilgrim Sudhana. This ensemble was completed in 1302 to mark the thirteenth memorial of Eison's death, and reflects the Mount Wutai tradition imported from China. Other images in the hall include a seated Maitreya Bodhisattva (Important Cultural Property, Kamakura period) standing close to 280 centimetres in height, a seated image of Eison himself, and a figure of Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism. Photography of the interior is not permitted.

The Surrounding Precincts

Immediately south of the Hondō, in a level area before the south approach, lies the platform of the East Pagoda. The base stones and central foundation are all that remain of what was originally designed as an eight-sided seven-storey tower in the Nara period, later rebuilt as a square five-storey pagoda before it was lost to fire in 1502. The entire precinct, including this pagoda site and the more distant Inner Sanctuary at Okunoin where Eison's grave-marker stands, was designated a National Historic Site in 1965.

A short walk to the south-west brings you to the Aizen-dō, originally a residential building of the Konoe family within the Kyoto Imperial Palace, donated to Saidaiji and re-erected here in 1762. It houses the famous seated Aizen Myōō image carved by Zen'en in 1247, opened to the public only in October and November each year, along with the National Treasure seated portrait of Eison.

The Shihō-dō, or Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings, sits to the east. Although the current building is an Edo-period reconstruction, the small demon figures trampled beneath the feet of the four guardian statues inside survive from the original Nara-period commission of 765 — among the very few tangible remnants of the temple's foundation period that visitors can see today. The Shūhō-kan treasury building, opened for limited periods three times a year, displays paintings and sutras designated as National Treasures.

Practical Notes for Visitors

Saidaiji is unusually accessible for a temple of its rank. Yamato-Saidaiji Station, three stops west of Kintetsu Nara on the Kintetsu Nara Line, is a three-minute walk from the south gate. The precincts are open to walk through at any hour without charge, and you can examine the exterior of the Main Hall freely. Interior viewing requires a separate admission fee (around 400 yen for the Hondō alone; combined tickets are available for the Aizen-dō and Shihō-dō as well). Hours are typically 8:30 to 16:30.

If you can time your visit, the Daichamori — a tea ceremony using bowls so large they require both hands to lift — is held in the precincts twice a year, with a smaller New Year ceremony in mid-January. The annual Kōmyō Shingon Doshakaji great rite is performed in the Main Hall itself from 3 to 5 October, when the building takes on a particular ceremonial atmosphere.