Nanzen-ji

One of the most powerful of Zen temples, Nanzen-ji (South Temple of Enlightenment), still presents a picture of what life might once have been like around a large Buddhist center.

For one thing it is, unlike many Zen temples—Mii-dera, for example—still filled with people. Located in the Higashiyama hillsjust a short walk from the Heian Shrine, the zoo, and the Miyako Hotel, it is also a part of its own neighborhood: the temple grounds shade imperceptibly to private lots with houses and families.

Another reason for medieval liveliness at Nanzen-ji is that the place is popular enough that the avenue leading to it is lined with restaurants, most of them offering some kind oikaiseki ryori—temple food—all of them expensive enough to keep up the tone. If there is the synthetic smell of gentrification there is at the same time the good human odor of things in use. Not for Nanzen-ji that musty scent of old paper, mice droppings, and cat piss which is the standard temple smell.

Like so many Kyoto temples, Nanzen-ji—central seat of the Rinzai branch of the Zen sect—was originally the villa of a retired emperor, a house turned into a place of religion, man retired so that the gods may reign. In 1274 the emperor Kameyama, only twenty-six and very unhappy at the power being usurped by the Kamakura shogunate, decided to step down. He had himself built this restful retreat, complete with two palaces (summer and winter) and extensive gardens.

It was not, however, restful enough: the emperor discovered that he was living not with a deity but with a ghost. When the residence was converted into a temple in 1290 he therefore appointed a priest—Mukan Fumon (Busshin Zenji), from Tofuku-ji—among whose duties was the quelling of the unruly being. This the cleric did through zazen. Sitting there deep in meditation, he outwaited the fretful spirit.

Ghost gone, the impressed ex-ruler rewarded the priest by making the appointment permanent and giving him and his sect a portion of the villa land. When the original building,-Nanzen-in, was constructed, the grateful former emperor himself carried over a handful of soil to personally place it on the foundation, declaring patronage and encouraging the place to prosper.

It did. Less than a hundred years later, in 1334, Nanzen-ji's importance was such that the emperor Go-Daigo proclaimed the temple first among the Five Temples (Gozan) and hence above all the rest. This included a lot of temples because, though the Gozan originally referred to the "five best," as the virtues of membership became apparent the Five Temples came to include some three hundred.

So Nanzen-ji was important indeed. The impetus was privilege. Abbots and monks were promoted by secular authorities and thus enjoyed benefits denied others. All five were in Kyoto, all were Rinzai Zen and it was this sect of Buddhism that the military rulers had made their own.

The reasons were, as we have seen, various. Chinese precedent (the original pattern for the Gozan came from China) lent probity to a sometimes shaky power structure and Zen Buddhism still carried with it a full cultural complement and an articulated philosophical system. Something like this was desired because both the Hojo and Ashikaga rulers needed a counterweight to the power and influence of the older Buddhist monasteries in Kyoto and Nara which were, in their opinion, too closely connected with the aristocracy.

From this Rinzai Zen system several thousand Soto sect temples were excluded, as well as some Kyoto Rinzai temples such as Daitoku-ji and Myoshin-ji. Its purpose, after all, was to make only selected temples all powerful. Thus, though Go-Daigo had originally designated Nanzen-ji as a head Gozan temple, it was the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu who in 1386 elevated it even higher. It was now the leading temple, one of the most powerful, wealthy, and most envied.

Enryaku-ji, jealous as always, sent its warrior-monks down the mountain and in 1393 burned many of the buildings. But these were at once reconstructed by the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi, and later on the temple commanded the support and protection of not only the imperial court, but also of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shoguns.

At its height Nanzen-ji had extensive grounds in the Higashiyama suburbs and some sixty-two smaller temples on its property. After the reforms of the Meiji period, which broke the power of the Gozan organization, however, it was left with a mere twelve. Nonetheless Nanzen-ji remains among the larger temple compounds.

The visitor to the South Temple of Enlightenment (Nanzen-ji) now arrives at the enormous three-story Sanmon, an Edo-period (1626) reconstruction—the "gateless gate" of Zen scripture—though the function is now more symbolic than actual. You can go through it, but it is no longer in common use. Two side-avenues carry the cars and trucks and pilgrim-filled buses now necessary for modern Buddhist life.

It remains the first chapter in the architectural narrative which, like an emaki hand-scroll, is unrolled before the visitor. The gate forms a grand opening paragraph leading into the passages behind, within the temple compound proper. Though this form is common to most temples, it is unusually easy to read at Nanzen-ji. One reason is that an early symmetry has been retained—the temple is like a mandala spread out on the slopes of Higashiyama.

Many stories are told about the Sanmon. It was, for example, in the upper reaches of the original gate that the famous thief Ishikawa Goemon was captured in 1585. He had come to admire the view and in the Kabuki drama Sanmon Gosan no Kiri (a title which has been translated as "The Fifty-three Paulownia Trees at the Main Gate") he exclaims at the sight, finding it particularly beautiful now that the blossoms are out.

Apprehended in the midst of his aesthetic appreciation, he was with his young son condemned to be boiled in oil in the bed of the nearby Kamo River. During this, the father held the child over his head before, himself no longer to endure the torture, purposefully and mercifully dashed his offspring into the bubbling liquid, then himself collapsed into it. This example of parental concern is still approvingly spoken of.

Further on, past many another structure, is the Seiryo-den, designated a National Treasure, a building given by the emperor Go-Yozei (1587—1611) from his very own palace compound. Even now it seems more palatial than priesdy with its elegant rooms, its covered corridors, and its sense of imperial spaciousness.

Also, despite signs of Buddhist austerity, the style is florid. This is because it is from that period called Momoyama (1568-1600). The translation of the name, Peach Mountain, suggests the style. Though the architecture displays the baroque firmness of the preceding Muromachi period (1336-1573), there is a degree of the ostentatious, an amount of rococo display in the interior decoration.

Just as the Katsura Detached Palace looks back with nostalgia upon an imaginary Heian period, so the Momoyama looks back to an imagined China. In the rooms of the Seiryo-den there is a gorgeous suite, the Tora no Ma, named after the thirty-nine panels by Kano Tan'yu (1602-74) showing tigers (none in Japan and very few in China) polychromed on gold leaf. Here, in other rooms, is that strange singing bird described as living on a far snowy mountain, half dimpled girl, half feathered bird. And elsewhere sits the phoenix—no longer the brooding immortal of the Byodo-in but now a fabulous bird of paradise—all beak, claws, and primary colors.

As one turns a corridor corner, there is also the Sho-hojo, a garden said to be the work of the famous landscape artist Kobori Enshu (1579-1647). It stands there with the assurance of a theatrical decor. An expanse of sand from which, off center, springs an enchanted island of ancient pine, clipped privet, rounded stones, and curved bushes. To the left, balancing this rococo composition, is a large, dramatic rock fittingly called "Leaping Tiger." One thinks of Versailles, of the elegance that power can sometimes assume.

All of this is stylish and assured—the Momoyama style at its best. Later, however, in the ensuing Tokugawa period, this style was to degenerate into something approaching the arbitrary decoration of chinoiserie. One sees it at Nikko, in the Tokugawa mausoleum where every surface is carved and colored—alive with the Chinese children playing, with the Sleeping Cat, with the Three Monkeys. The effect is so vivid, and so vulgar, that we call it Seventeenth-Century Fox.

Another thought that intrudes itself is: how difficult it must be to dust. And, in so thinking, we reveal why the early Victorian tourists so loved Nikko. It was just like the what-nots, the shelves for bric-a-brac back home. Henry Adams, who had few good words for the country, had only praise for the place. He, like many another Victorian, loved the busy surface—as though the over-decorated could explain and excuse the sheer material worth of the place.

At Nanzen-ji, however, the Peach Mountain style named after Hideyoshis gaudy palaces, now long destroyed, has not yet turned into Chinese Restaurant. Wandering the corridors and the courtyards, one is impressed by the firm ingenuity, the restrained lavishness, the tightly controlled imagination of the place. And one is also impressed by what all this must have cost. A new kind of materialism is on display in the art of the Momoyama—one that seeks to vindicate itself.