Five Copper Bells

A Tang-Dynasty Bronze Vajra Bell at Shōchi-in

Shōchi-in, a temple on Kōyasan, holds a bronze ritual bell whose handle ends in a five-pronged vajra. In Japanese it is the dō gokorei, a copper-alloy five-pronged bell. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it plainly as a work of the Tang dynasty, made in China, and it was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1928. Its early designation number, among the lowest in the registers, signals how soon and how surely its importance was recognised.

For all its small size, this is an object of the first rank in the world of esoteric Buddhism. The vajra bell is a core implement of Shingon ritual, and a Tang-dynasty Chinese example, preserved on the mountain that Kūkai founded as the centre of that teaching in Japan, carries unusual weight as a witness to where the tradition came from.

What a Five-Pronged Vajra Bell Is

In Shingon esoteric practice, the altar is laid with paired implements. One is the vajra, a short metal sceptre derived from an ancient Indian thunderbolt-weapon, made with one, three, or five prongs at each end. The other is the bell, whose handle is shaped as half a vajra and is named for the number of its prongs: the five-pronged form is the gokorei. The priest holds the vajra in one hand and the bell in the other, the two together standing for wisdom and method, the indivisible pair at the heart of the teaching.

The bell is rung to mark the rite, to summon and delight the deities invoked, and to focus the practitioner's mind. The five prongs of its handle carry their own meaning, read as the five wisdoms of the cosmic Buddha. An implement of this kind is therefore not an accessory but a compact image of the whole esoteric system, held in the hand and sounded.

Why a Chinese Origin Matters

Esoteric Buddhism reached Japan from Tang China at the start of the ninth century, when Kūkai studied at the capital and returned with texts, mandalas, and ritual implements. The vajras and bells used on the altar were among the objects whose forms Japanese metalworkers then learned to reproduce. A bell that is itself Tang Chinese sits at the source of that transmission: it is the kind of model from which the Japanese tradition was built, rather than a later copy of one.

That is why the national record's brief note, "a work of the Tang dynasty," carries so much. The designation, made in 1928 with one of the early registration numbers, reflects the judgement that this is an old imported implement of real art-historical value, not merely a serviceable ritual bell. The national database fixes the essentials: a single bronze five-pronged vajra bell, of Chinese Tang-dynasty manufacture, an Important Cultural Property. As with many older designations, it does not record the dimensions.

Shōchi-in and Seeing the Bell

Shōchi-in is one of the learned temples of Kōyasan, a special head temple of the Kōyasan Shingon school. Tradition places its founding in the early twelfth century, and it was revived in the Kamakura period by the scholar-monk Dōhan, counted among the "eight worthies of Kōya." It holds a National Treasure, the Bunkan Shirin, an anthology of Chinese prose and verse compiled in the Tang period, along with an Important Cultural Property seated image of Fudō Myōō. The temple is also a working pilgrim lodging, set behind a dry-landscape garden laid out in the twentieth century by the garden designer Shigemori Mirei, itself a registered monument.

The vajra bell is not on open display. Like most of Kōyasan's designated holdings, it is cared for in coordination with the Kōyasan Reihōkan and appears only when an exhibition gathers ritual implements or the treasures of Shōchi-in. A traveller who wishes to see it should follow the Reihōkan's special-exhibition programme. When the bell is not shown, the museum and the mountain's temples display many other esoteric implements, vajras, bells, and altar fittings, that make clear how such objects were used and why a Tang-dynasty example is prized.

Even without the bell in front of you, Shōchi-in is worth the short walk from the central temple precinct. To stay overnight, to sit before the moss and stone of its garden, and to know that the temple keeps both a Tang anthology in writing and a Tang bell in bronze, is to grasp how directly Kōyasan still touches the China from which its learning came.