Ryuzuji Temple Main Hall

The Main Hall of Ryūtō-ji: A Mountain-Ascetic Temple at the Foot of Mt. Chōkai

One copper-roofed building at Ryūtō-ji carries two jobs under a single ridge. Its northern half is a Buddhist worship hall; its southern half is the priests' living quarters, right down to an earthen-floored kitchen. Step up to the front and you meet a porch crowned by a karahafu, the gently undulating gable that Japanese carpenters reserved for entrances of some ceremony. The hall dates to Tenpō 15 (1844), built when this hillside village of Kamiwarabioka was still the headquarters of the mountain ascetics who worshipped Mt. Chōkai.

Ryūtō-ji sits on a low rise on the western skirts of Mt. Chōkai, the great volcano that straddles the border of Yamagata and Akita. The temple belongs to the Chisan branch of Shingon Buddhism, takes Chōkaisan as its mountain name, and enshrines Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of Healing, who was regarded as the original Buddhist form of the deity dwelling on the summit. For centuries the temple stood at the head of an entire community of religious lodges. Understanding the building means understanding that vanished community.

Head Temple of the Warabioka Lodges

Mt. Chōkai was approached from several directions, and each trailhead grew its own order of shugenja, practitioners of Shugendō who sought spiritual power through mountain austerities. The settlement of Warabioka produced the largest of these orders. By the early modern period its members had organised themselves as the "thirty-three lodges of Warabioka," and Ryūtō-ji served as their gakutō, the scholarly head temple that supervised the rest.

Temple tradition places the founding in 807, crediting a monk named Jishō Shōnin, though no documents survive to confirm it. Another account, recorded in a later chronicle, has the priest Ennin subduing a red demon and a blue demon on the mountain around 860 and raising a hall at the spot he judged to be the dragon's head, since the mountain's outline suggested a coiled dragon. The temple was originally called Shōgakuzan Kannon-ji and took the name Ryūtō-ji, "Dragon's Head Temple," only in 1655. Its priests practised within the Tōzan tradition of Shugendō, answering to the Sanbōin cloister of Daigo-ji in Kyoto.

That world ended abruptly. The 1868 order separating Shinto from Buddhism, followed by an 1872 ban on Shugendō, emptied Mt. Chōkai of its ascetics. Ryūtō-ji chose to remain a Buddhist temple rather than convert to a shrine, which is why the hall survives at all.

Why the Hall Is Registered

The Main Hall carries the status of Registered Tangible Cultural Property, a category worth explaining for visitors used to the language of National Treasures. Japan introduced this register in 1996 as a lighter form of protection than designation as an Important Cultural Property or National Treasure. Rather than freezing a building under strict controls, registration is meant to keep historic structures in everyday use while recognising their contribution to the country's historic landscape. Buildings generally need to be at least half a century old and to meet criteria such as adding character to their surroundings. The Main Hall was entered on the register on 17 November 2015 under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

What earned it that place is its honest record of how a Shugendō head temple actually lived. The plan follows the hōjō format of six rooms, with a raised dais room set at the northern end of the inner sanctuary, the seat reserved for the highest ranks. Combining the worship hall and the residential quarters in one structure was practical architecture for a working religious house, and it remains one of the few standing relics of Chōkai mountain asceticism.

What to Look For

The frame rewards a slow look. The pillars are noticeably thick, and the eye is drawn to the kōryō, the curved "rainbow beams" that arc across the openings around the inner and outer sanctuaries and above the veranda. These members are both structural and decorative, and their craftsmanship is the quiet argument for the building's value. The hall measures roughly thirteen and a half ken across the front by six and a half deep, with the hip-and-gable roof now clad in copper sheet that has weathered to a soft green.

Outside the hall, the gateway figures are hard to forget. A pair of fierce Niō guardians, carved in an unusual style sometimes described as Indian in feeling, stand with their veins and muscles seemingly laid bare. They did not begin here: they were moved from the gate of the neighbouring Ōmonoimi Shrine when Shinto and Buddhism were separated. Local belief holds that crawling through the gap beneath them cures measles and wards off illness, a custom that says much about how the sacred and the everyday once mingled in this village.

A short walk takes in the temple's Kannon Hall, which shelters a standing eleven-headed Kannon some 3.6 metres tall, carved in the early Heian period. Ryūtō-ji is the nineteenth station of the Shōnai pilgrimage of thirty-three Kannon and the sixth of the regional thirteen-Buddha circuit, so it still draws pilgrims as well as travellers.

Around Ryūtō-ji

The temple grounds fall within the National Historic Site of Mt. Chōkai, and the wider hamlet is one of the most rewarding places in the region to read the landscape of mountain worship. Immediately beside the temple stands the Warabioka entrance shrine of Ōmonoimi Jinja, the foothill counterpart to the shrine on Chōkai's summit; its main hall, gate, and kagura stage are themselves Registered Tangible Cultural Properties. The lanes around the "upper temple" district still preserve the look of a shukubō town, where lodging houses once received climbers preparing to ascend the holy mountain.

Reaching Ryūtō-ji is straightforward. It lies about ten minutes by car from either JR Yuza Station or JR Minami-Chōkai Station, just off National Route 345. Viewing hours run from 8:00 to 17:00, and there is parking for around ten cars with space for three buses. Pair the visit with the shrine next door and an unhurried wander through the old lodge streets, and the half-forgotten geography of Chōkai Shugendō begins to come back into focus.