Echizen Daibutsu: One Man’s Very Large Idea

An entrance with ambitions

At the main gate, those proportions change. White stone lions flank the steps, enormous columns rise beneath the roof, and the people passing between them provide a useful reminder of how large a person normally is. Through the opening, another gateway waits beyond.

A temple from 1987

For all its monumental gates and traditional roofs, Seidaiji was inaugurated in 1987.

The centuries of history suggested by the entrance turn out to fit comfortably within a human lifetime.

Behind it was a businessman named Kiyoshi Tada, whose family had left Katsuyama for Osaka after the family business collapsed when he was a small child. His working life took him through shop work and dock labour before he became a taxi driver and, eventually, the founder of Sōgo Taxi.

The temple was a project of his later years, back in the town his family had left. What took shape here was an entire setting for worship: gates, a vast hall, a pagoda and Buddhist figures by the thousand. The cost has been reported at ¥38 billion.

It was not his only very large idea in Katsuyama. Katsuyama Castle Museum, another of his projects, opened in 1992, housed in a castle-keep-style building billed as the tallest in Japan, at 57.8 metres. Katsuyama Castle, historically, never had a keep.

Seidaiji now belongs to the Myōshinji branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism. Beyond the gates, covered corridors frame a courtyard facing the Great Buddha Hall. Brown pillars divide its white walls into bays, and each bay has arched windows and a railed balcony. From the courtyard, it looks less like a temple hall than a grand hotel. The approach leads towards the central entrance and the seated figure inside.

In considerable company

The Buddha sits against a huge gold-and-black halo. His face is dark, with gold catching on his cheeks and across the folds of his robe. One hand is raised; the other rests open above his lap. Down near the base, small candle flames burn among the lotus ornaments.

A place for the three poisons

Among all this, a much smaller object offers visitors something to do with their own less serene thoughts. A wooden sign reads omou tsubo, beside a large jar. In Japanese, omou tsubo means things going exactly as someone intended; to fall into someone’s omou tsubo is to play right into their hands. Here, tsubo—a pot or jar—has also been supplied literally.

The instructions explain the Buddhist “three poisons”: greed, anger and delusion. Visitors are invited to write these faults on a slip, crumple it in their hand and throw it into the jar. At the time of my visit, a slip cost ¥100. There is no requirement to arrive free of faults. The jar rather depends on the opposite.

Outside the hall

Back outside, the five-storey pagoda draws the view away from the Great Buddha Hall. Beyond the buildings, the wooded hillside is still visible through the rain.