Chōsenji Temple: A Different Kind of Shibuya Crowd

Faces in the crowd

From a distance, the rows can look like a single mass of weathered stone. Up close, individual figures begin to emerge. A broad seated figure has a full, rounded face; nearby, slender figures are carved into upright slabs. One elaborate relief fits several faces and a fan of arms into its narrow outline. On other stones, the folds of a robe have become barely visible.

Some faces remain easy to read, while others require a little cooperation from the viewer. A closer look at one carving brings the smaller figure behind it into view, then another farther along the row. Two hundred is a number on a sign; on the ground, there is quite a lot to look at.

Keeping the subjects still is, for once, the easy part.

Gathered from the neighbourhood

An information board at the temple helps explain the assortment. Most of the figures depict Jizō, with several forms of Kannon also represented—Buddhist figures associated with protection and compassion.

These figures once stood around the neighbourhood. As housing development and other changes reshaped the area, they were moved to Chōsenji and brought together in the temple cemetery.

They were not conceived as one grand group.

Their neighbours, like their addresses, have changed.

Behind them, an apartment building rises above the cemetery wall. Tokyo is not easily persuaded to stay out of its own photographs.

Days off and devotion

The figures date from the Edo period to the Meiji era, when the area was still farmland, and their inscriptions preserve traces of the people who lived here. Local religious associations called kō formed around devotion to Jizō and Kannon. On appointed days, members took time off work and gathered in one another’s homes, taking turns to host. They chanted Buddhist prayers, shared food and drink, talked, and gave sweets to the children. The children had a particularly straightforward reason to keep track of the calendar.

For the villagers, these meetings were among the few occasions for recreation. Prayer, hospitality and a day away from work all had a place in the same gathering.

Chōsenji’s most celebrated figure has been kept rather warmer. Known as the Hitohada Kannon—roughly, the human-skin Kannon—it is a wooden figure that, according to the temple, the twelfth-century warrior Shibuya Konnōmaru kept with him on every battlefield. Wood though it is, it was said to be as warm as human skin.

Under the leaves at the back of the cemetery, a few standing figures are edged with ivy. One still has a distinct expression; the face beside it has almost disappeared. The longer you look, the less interchangeable they become.