Hoko-ji

• Established: 1595, Toyotomi Hideyoshi
• Japanese: 方広寺 (houkouji)

The Hôkô-ji is a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, originally established in 1595 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It is famous for the Great Buddha (Kyoto daibutsu) Hideyoshi had installed there, and for a controversy regarding the inscription on the bell Hideyoshi had installed, which Tokugawa Ieyasu claimed contained a hidden message of disrespect towards him.

The temple was originally built with the tallest Buddha Hall (butsuden) of any temple in Japan. At 48m high, roughly equivalent to fifteen stories, it was quite possibly the largest wooden building on earth for a time, larger even than the Buddha Hall at Tôdai-ji which arguably holds that distinction today. The wooden statue of Dainichi nyorai contained within, constructed by the Shichijô bussho ("Seventh Avenue Buddhist [Sculpture] Studio") was held together with nails and brackets made by melting down weapons collected in Hideyoshi's 1588 "Sword Hunt." Hideyoshi also installed at Hôkô-ji an Amida statue from Zenkô-ji, of particularly unique eminence as it was said to be not merely a representation of Amida, but genuinely alive itself. This statue was (and still is today) considered so sacred that it was transported in a closed box, and has never been shown to the public.

Following Hideyoshi's death in 1598, he had himself deified as the great kami Hôkoku dai myôjin, and enshrined at Toyokuni Shrine (aka Hôkoku Shrine), which was erected adjacent to Hôkô-ji. The temple was reduced in some respects by the Tokugawa shogunate, but was maintained, and even rebuilt following a fire in the 1660s. However, at that time, the nails and brackets of the wooden Daibutsu were melted down, yielding, supposedly, 40 million kanmon worth of metal. The Daibutsu was replaced with a bronze sculpture at that time, and the great Amida was returned to Zenkô-ji.

The temple was spared in a fire which destroyed much of the city in 1788, but ten years later, in 1798, the Great Buddha Hall was struck by lightning, and was destroyed in the resulting fire, along with the Daibutsu within. Though extensive efforts were made to save the building, and the statue, with a chain of 10,000 people conveying buckets of water to put out the blaze, it was for naught in the end. On this terrible occasion, it is said that mysterious fireballs were seen in the skies over Edo, and that one even landed in the garden of Matsudaira Sadanobu. The temple was rebuilt, but the Daibutsu was not.

References

• Timon Screech, Obtaining Images, University of Hawaii Press (2012), 94-98.