Jomyo-Ji Temple Main Hall

Jōmyō-ji Main Hall: A Kamakura Hall That Outlived Its Own Temple

In 1585, an army under Toyotomi Hideyoshi moved through this corner of Kii Province and burned the temple of Jōmyō-ji to the ground. Two buildings escaped. Both sat far enough up the wooded hillside to be overlooked, and both still stand: a two-storied pagoda and the hall that now serves as the temple's main hall. That hall is the subject of this article. Locals know it equally well as the Yakushi-dō, after the seated Medicine Buddha enshrined inside.

The Main Hall occupies a terrace on the slope of Mount Iō in Miyazaki-chō, in the city of Arida in southern Wakayama Prefecture. It is a compact building, three bays wide and three bays deep, a single story beneath a hip roof of fired clay tiles, with a one-bay worship porch (kōhai) reaching out over the entrance. The Agency for Cultural Affairs places its construction in the late Kamakura period, somewhere between roughly 1275 and 1332.

A Founding Legend, a Fire, and a Revival

Temple tradition traces Jōmyō-ji back to the year 806, when it is said to have been founded by Nyohō, a monk from Tang China and a disciple of the famous vinaya master Ganjin, at the wish of Fujiwara no Otomuro, mother of Emperor Heizei. The story does not quite line up with the calendar: Otomuro died in 790, sixteen years before the supposed founding, so the account is best read as devotional memory rather than dated record. A second tradition credits a nun named Saiami from Awa. What the sources agree on is that the temple was once a full monastic complex of seven halls.

By the late twelfth century the temple held seventy koku of land under the local lord Miyazaki Sadanori. Then came 1585. The hilltop halls burned, and the temple fell into a long decline. Recovery arrived in 1647, when Tokugawa Yorinobu, the first lord of the Kishū domain, rebuilt the site. The temple, originally tied to the vinaya school, was reorganized under the Rinzai Zen tradition of Myōshin-ji in 1662, and it belongs to that branch today.

Why the Hall Is Designated

The Main Hall was registered as a protected structure on 29 August 1904, one of the early architectural designations made under the Meiji government's framework for safeguarding old shrines and temples. Under the postwar system it is classed as an Important Cultural Property in the buildings category.

Its value lies in what survived. Most provincial temple architecture of the Kamakura period was lost to war, fire, and rebuilding, so a hall of this age in a rural setting is uncommon. The proportions repay attention. Although the roof was reworked more than once in later centuries, the low, gentle pitch and the balance of the eaves preserve the feel of Kamakura-period design. A visitor who has seen later Edo-period temple roofs, steeper and more emphatic, will notice the difference at once.

What to Look For

Start with the roof. It is tiled now, but it was not always so. Records of major repairs in 1686, 1718, and 1918 note that the original cypress-bark covering was replaced with clay tile during this work. The shallow slope is the clue to the building's true age, a line that reads older than its present surface.

Step under the kōhai and look up into the structural timberwork before entering. Inside sits the Medicine Buddha that gives the hall its alternate name, flanked by attendant figures, with statues of the Twelve Heavenly Generals arranged as guardians. These sculptures are themselves nationally designated and date from the Kamakura period. One sobering note for the visitor: six of the twelve generals were stolen in 1994 and have not been recovered.

The hall's most refined object is easy to miss. The altar platform beneath the Buddha, a Buddhist dais inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a lotus-and-arabesque pattern, was designated a cultural property as early as 1897 and is regarded as a fine example of Kamakura-period decorative craft. A short walk away stands the second survivor of 1585, the two-storied pagoda, rising just under thirteen meters and also nationally designated.

Getting There and the Surrounding Area

Jōmyō-ji sits on a hillside, and the climb is part of the visit. From Minoshima Station on the JR Kinokuni Line, a Chūki bus toward Yabitsu Kaigan reaches the Jōmyō-ji-mae stop in about five minutes, followed by a five-minute walk; the same trip takes around five minutes by car. Drivers coming from the Hanwa Expressway leave at the Arida interchange and follow Route 42 for roughly twenty minutes. There is parking on site. From the terrace, on a clear day, you can see across the water to Awaji Island.

Arida is orange country. The hills around the temple are terraced with groves of Arida mikan, the prized mandarin that has made the area's name, and the fruit is at its best from late autumn into winter. Nearby is Itoga Inari Shrine, claimed to be among the oldest Inari shrines in Japan, and the temple of Tokushō-ji. The neighboring town of Yuasa, the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce, lies a short distance away and rewards a half-day on its own.