Hase-dera

Hase-dera is a temple in Hase, Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, in a place sung of in the Man'yoshu poetry anthology as "Hatsuse, the hidden land." Its formal name is Buzan Kagura-in Hase-dera. It is the head temple of the Buzan school of Shingon Buddhism and also the eighth stop on the Saigoku pilgrimage to 33 Kannon temples. According to the temple's brief history, in 686 the monk Domyo enshrined a bronze plaque depicting a scene from the Lotus Sutra on the western hill for Emperor Tenmu, and in 727 the monk Tokudo, on the order of Emperor Shomu, made an Eleven-Faced Kannon image on the eastern hill. Throughout the year it is cherished as the "temple of flowers."

The National Treasure Main Hall is a large hall built in the kakezukuri (stage) style, jutting out from a cliff partway up Mount Ohatsuse, and it is also called the Kannon-do or Daihikaku. The national cultural properties database dates it to 1650 in the early Edo period, and the temple describes it as a representative temple main hall from the large-scale building projects of the Tokugawa shogunate. It takes the form known as a narabido, combining the inner hall for the principal image and the worship hall into one, with a stone-paved floor between them. The south-facing front has a hip-and-gable roof, but the roof structure is so complex that it is also called yatsumune-zukuri (eight-ridge style).

The roofs are covered with clay tiles, and the worship hall is built slightly lower than the inner hall that enshrines the principal image. It was designated a National Treasure in December 2004. Inside stands the principal image, a standing Eleven-Faced Kannon (an Important Cultural Property) made in 1538 in the Muromachi period by the master sculptor Unso and others. It is a Hase-dera-style image holding a staff in the right hand and a water jar in the left, and at 10.18 meters tall, the temple calls it the largest wooden Buddhist statue in Japan. From the stage at the front you can look out over the grounds, laid out along the rise and fall of the land.

A covered corridor of steps, the Noboriro, leads from the Nio Gate up to the Main Hall. According to the temple, it was first built in 1039 by Nakatomi no Nobukiyo, a priest of Kasuga Taisha, in thanks for his son's recovery from illness. Today it has 108 bays and 399 steps, is divided into lower, middle and upper sections, and is hung with Hase-style lanterns. The corridor is an Important Cultural Property. The lower and middle sections and the Nio Gate were rebuilt in 1889. The grounds also hold a five-storied pagoda built in 1954, the first built in Japan after the war and called "the great pagoda of the Showa era," and Moto-Hasedera, said to be the site where Domyo first founded a temple.

The Shuhozo museum opens in spring (March to May) and autumn (October to December) to show National Treasures, Important Cultural Properties and other treasures handed down at the temple (free apart from the entry fee). In spring the cherry blossoms are followed by peonies, and during the peony festival a service is held to offer peonies to Kannon. In autumn the leaves color the grounds from October to early December, and on February 14 the Dadaoshi service is held, in which demons carrying torches rampage about. The steps of the Noboriro go on for a long way, so allow plenty of time and energy for your visit.