Haiku Travels
Shin-Yakushiji (Nara)
it's "Insects Awakening" -
their fingers bent back,
Buddhas rage in anger
keichitsu ya / yubi sorikaeru / funnu Butsu
啓蟄や指反りかへる憤怒仏
Shuson
[Shin-Yakushiji Temple]
This haiku is set in Shin-Yakushiji Temple in Nara. Shin-Yakushiji stands in the eastern part of the city, in the Takabatake area, just below the Kasuga Shrine. Today it is a quiet residential district, all the more so as Shin-Yakushiji is not one of the temples overrun by global tourism. The name "Takabatake" means "high field," and originated in the fact that this area lies a bit higher than the rest of Nara, as it forms the western end of the Yamato plateau. Traditionally, the priests of the Kasuga Shrine used to live here.
Shin-Yakushiji (or New Yakushi Temple) was founded here in 747 by Empress Komyo, to pray for the recovery from an illness of her husband Emperor Shomu - after all, Yakushi is the Healing Buddha, Bhaisajya-guru, the magician of both body and soul (on top of that he was seen as the Buddha who grants wishes and helps us flourish in this world - he was the most popular Buddha-type in the Heian period, until he was surpassed by Amida).
The temple took several years to build, for it was a large temple with a full layout of halls, two pagodas, cloisters and living quarters for 100 monks. The original Main Hall must have been very imposing, an elongated structure of nine bays wide, housing seven sets of Yakushi with each a Nikko and Gekko Bosatsu, plus a set of the Twelve Divine Generals (Juni Shinsho). That original temple has fallen victim to the ravages of time and lies deeply buried under the residences that now stand in this area.
The only building left is the present hall which was certainly not the original Main Hall - although it is believed to have been built in 747 at the temple's foundation. It stood at the back of the grounds and probably was the Kekasho, the place where Repentance Rituals were held in
front of the Yakushi and his Twelve Divine Generals. The hall must always have had the same function, for the wide spacing of the pillars was designed to accommodate the large circular dais of stamped earth on which the
statues still stand. The Twelve Divine Generals
have an inscription dating them to the Tenpyo period, making this the oldest set that has come down to us.
[Basara, the most dynamic statue among the twelve]
Inside the temple hall it is dusk. Some candles are burning (in a wooden hall with National Treasures?). The hall is almost filled up by a low altar, a sort of circular dais, the Shumidan, which is made of stamped earth, like the doma in a farm house. On the platform stand twelve life-sized statues, facing outward, fierce and militaristic, encircling a large statue of a seated Yakushi Nyorai. They immediately attract attention. Wrathful faces float up out of the darkness. The nostrils flare, the tendons in the face are tense and the obsidian inlaid in the wide-open eyes emits a fierce glitter. These twelve military men are violence incarnate. They are so angry that their hair literally stands on end, and their outstretched fingers are bent backwards!
The statues of the Twelve Generals are made of unbaked clay, molded on
to a wooden skeleton, and then painted in various colors. These have of
course faded away, except some small patches, leaving the generals with a
white skin. The generals are clad in Chinese-style armor and carry
various weapons. Each has the assignment of guarding the Buddhist law
against the danger from one of the twelve directions of the compass:
north, north-northeast, east-northeast, east, etc. They were later
matched with the twelve hours of the day, the twelve months of the year
and of course the twelve animals of the Japanese zodiac. Later statues
often have the zodiac animal in their headgear.
The Yakushi sits well-protected in the middle. He is a big-boned figure, with swelling chest, big nose, protuberant lips, large eyes. The Yakushi makes the “no fear” gesture with his right hand and carries a medicine pot in his left one. Head and body have been made from one block of wood, the statue is unpainted. Such statues were first made around 800, in the early Heian period and they always had magical properties. At 191 cm, it is an imposing statue.
[Shin-Yakushiji seen through the temple gate]
Poet and scholar Kato Shuson (1905-1993) started out as an assistant teacher in the small Saitama town of Kasukabe. When he met haiku poet Mizuhara Shuoshi, his interest in haiku was kindled (he was originally more interested in tanka). Shuson became Shuoshi’s lifelong disciple and published his first haiku in Shuoshi’s magazine “Ashibi.” With Shuoshi’s help, Shuson belatedly took a grade in Japanese literature. He started his own haiku magazine "Kanrai" (Thunder in Winter) and became especially popular from the 1960s on for the "humane dimension" of his haiku. From 1970, he was commissioned by the Asahi newspaper as one of the judges for the weekly haiku page.
The present haiku starts with a difficult term, "keichitsu," a kigo for spring and one of the 24 "solar terms" or Sekki into which the year was divided in ancient Japan (and China, where this custom originated). Even in modern Japan, several of these sekki terms are still in common use, as shunbun for the vernal equinox and shubun for the autumnal equinox, toji for the winter solstice, and such terms as risshun for the beginning of spring. Keichitsu starts around March 6 and is the period when literally "insects awaken from their winter sleep or hibernation." It was thought that the spring thunder woke the insects up so that they would emerge from underground. It also means that around this time the weather is getting a little bit warmer (it is after all a month after risshun, the beginning of spring, which falls around February 4).
So what is the association between the wrathful statues of the Twelve Divine Generals (in the haiku for short called "Buddhas," although strictly speaking they are not Buddhas) and the solar term of "Insects Awaken"? When I look at my own visits to Shin-Yakushiji, I always feel refreshed and invigorated by seeing these powerful statues, it is as if their anger cleanses the spirit. Isn't that what Shuson also felt? A surge of new power at the time when nature itself is also waking up?
Shin-Yakushiji is a 10 min. walk from the Wariishicho bus stop, which is served by Nara City Loop Buses and other buses from both JR Nara Station and Kintetsu Nara Station (it only takes about 10 min to get here).
Other destinations in the neighborhood are the Irie Taikichi Memorial Museum of Photography (next to the temple, in a beautiful design by Kurokawa Kisho which puts most of the building underground so as not to disturb the neighborhood) and further to the north, the former residence of writer Shiga Naoya, a house with gardens in wonderful harmony between east and west. Read more about this house in my article on this blog.
[The photos of Shinyakushiji are my own. The photo of Basara is from Wikipedia (Ogawa Seiyou (1894-1960), a famous photographer in Japan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)]