Kofuku-ji

Kofuku-ji developed as the temple of the Fujiwara clan. According to its official site, its predecessor was Yamashina-dera, said to have been built in 669 by Kagami no Okimi to pray for the recovery of her husband, Fujiwara no Kamatari. It later moved to Asuka and was called Umayasaka-dera, and when the capital moved to Heijo-kyo in 710, Fujiwara no Fuhito relocated it to the present site and named it Kofuku-ji. It ranked among the Four Great Temples in the Nara period and the Seven Great Temples in the Heian period, and enjoyed generous protection because of its close ties to the northern Fujiwara house. In the Heian period it also took control of Kasuga Shrine, and the 1595 land survey fixed a single combined holding for "Kasuga Shrine and Kofuku-ji."

Kofuku-ji's history is one of repeated fires and rebuilding. It burned completely in 1180 in the fire set by Taira no Shigehira, and restoration began the next year. All four of its National Treasure buildings were built after that. According to the chronology, the Hokuen-do was built in 721 by Empress Genmei and Empress Gensho and rebuilt around 1210. The Eastern Golden Hall was founded by Emperor Shomu in 726 and rebuilt in 1415. The five-story pagoda was built by Empress Komyo in 730 and rebuilt in 1426. The three-story pagoda is recorded as built by Kokamon'in in 1143; the present structure dates to the early Kamakura period.

The Eastern Golden Hall and the five-story pagoda burned together in 1411. The hall was rebuilt first, and the pagoda about ten years after that. It is worth viewing the two as buildings from the same stretch of Muromachi-period rebuilding. The Hokuen-do is an octagonal hall, and the chronology notes that the sculptor Unkei began making its statues in 1208. The hall and the images inside it were thus completed at roughly the same time, within the Kamakura-period recovery.

In the Meiji era, the 1868 order separating Shinto and Buddhism and the 1870 law confiscating temple lands took away all land except the halls and towers. In 1874 the refectory and its annex were demolished, and in 1880 the old precinct became Nara Park. In 1717 the Golden Hall and Lecture Hall burned, and in 1819 a temporary Golden Hall was built with donations from a benefactor. In 1897 the Hokuen-do and the two pagodas were designated specially protected buildings, and a system for their preservation began to take shape. It works well to combine a walk through Nara Park with a look at the old towers and halls one by one.