The Oldest Temple

20 June 2022

The origins of Sensōji, the oldest temple in Tōkyō, date back to the year 628 CE, during the Asuka Period. Let me pause and say that the Chinese characters chosen for Asuka, 飛鳥, are beautifully evocative (they literally mean flying bird) but have no phonetic connection to asuka, which is why it always takes me a few seconds to remember a word that might otherwise be read as tobitori or hichō is actually asuka.

One day in the 36th year of the Empress Suiko (yes, empress—Suiko was the first female to ascend the throne and it wasn’t until the Meiji Era, late 1800s, early 1900s, that a male succession law was established), two brothers were fishing in the Miyato River far from the imperial capital in Asuka. (Asuka was in an area now known as Nara Prefecture, and the river is now known as Sumida River in modern-day Tōkyō.)

The brothers, named Hinokuma-no-Hamanari and Hinokuma-no-Takenari, snagged something heavy in their nets, and when they hauled in their catch, they discovered a golden statue of Kwannon, the Bodhisattva of Mercy. The statue was of a manifestation of Kwannon known as Āryāvalokiteśvara in Sanskrit, and as 聖観音 (shōkannon) in Japanese, one of the six manifestations of Kwannon. This manifestation is unique because it is the only one depicted in statue form has having one face and two arms. (Another name for Kwannon is 観世音 (kanzeon), One who Hears the Pleas of the World, and I promise to talk more of my favorite bodhisattva in future issues, but statues of Kwannon often have multiple faces and arms to better attend to the needs of her supplicants.)

The brothers, together with their lord, Haji-no-Nakatomo, erected a temple at the site of their home, but a few years later, in 645 CE, a monk named 勝海 (Shōkai) had a dream in which Kwannon revealed that her statue could only be venerated in secret. In other words, the temple needed an enclosure to house the statue and to keep it from view. During the Heian Period, a monk named 円仁 (Ennin) decided that worshippers at the shrine should have a substitute image to venerate, and he carved a statue of Kwannon himself in the year 828 CE.

Mention is made of the temple during the Kamakura Period (when Japan’s first shogunate was established by 源頼朝 (Minamoto-no-Yoritomo), from 1185 to 1333 CE, but Sensōji truly rose to fame when the Tokugawa shogunate established their seat in Edo, now Tōkyō.

But what is the connection between Tōkyō’s oldest temple and me, you might wonder.

When I arrived in Japan in 1988, I lived and worked just to the northwest of Tōkyō, in Saitama Prefecture. My closest train station was on the Takasaki Line, which led directly to one of Tōkyō’s primary hubs, Ueno Station. (The others are, of course, Tōkyō Station and Shinjuku Station.)

My first visit to Sensōji was probably late in 1988 or early in 1989. I taught at Okegawa Senior High School, and four of the English teachers there, Mssrs. Tsunoda, Hamatsu, Fukumoto, and Hashimoto, loved showing me around Tōkyō on Sundays, when none of us were working. They took me to Akihabara (where all the mom-and-pop electronics shops were), to Ueno Park and its many museums, to Ginza to gawk, and to Asakusa.

Another fun note: Asakusa is the native Japanese pronunciation for 浅草, a place name meaning shallow grass. Buddhist temples, however, use the Chinese pronunciation of characters (Buddhism was a Chinese import, via Korea, after all). And so 浅草寺 is sensōji, the temple of the shallow grass.

I fell in love with Sensōji. The massive gate, Kaminarimon (literally the thunder gate) that leads you into the outer precincts where all the shops line a street called Nakamise, which was established in 1685 CE. Kaminarimon was much bigger during the Edo Period, too. This depiction of the temple complex from 1820, however, seems to indicate that the gate was rebuilt smaller after a fire.

(During the fires that resulted from the massive Kantō Earthquake in 1923, traditional firefighters designated the temple and its precincts as a refuge for victims, and a massive bucket relay kept the temple intact. The firebombing of Tōkyō in 1945, however, destroyed the temple, and it was rebuilt as it is today after the war ended.)

Sensōji is home to multiple events over the course of the year. The biggest crowds gather for New Year’s Eve and for the Sanja Festival, held on the third weekend in May, where neighborhood teams honor Sensōji’s three founders (Hinokuma-no-Hamanari, Hinokuma-no-Takenari, and Haji-no-Nakatomo). The third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, established a Shintō shrine called 浅草神社 (Asakusa Shrine) next to Sensōji, and the three portable shrines, or 神輿 (mikoshi, literally palanquin of the Gods), one for each of the venerated three founders, are paraded through the neighborhood as millions of people watch. (You’ve never been in a crowd until you’ve been in a Sanja Festival crowd!)

There are also famous markets at the temple. In summer, you can shop for pots of beautiful morning glories, and if you get there early, you can find the Danjuro variety with its exquisite pale brown flowers. If you visit on July 9th or 10th, you luck out, because one day of prayers then is worth a whopping 46,000 days of devotion AND you can shop for Chinese lantern plant, with its bright red husks set around a small red choke like a tomatillo. I love the fact that the Japanese word for those plants is 鬼灯 (hōzuki, literally demon’s lantern). And in December, there is a year-end market for battledores. (It is traditional to play badminton during the New Year’s holidays, and the battledores (the badminton paddles) are exquisite. I still have the one I bought in 1989.)

The Asakusa neighborhood is packed with shops that sell uniquely Japanese products. A few blocks over from Sensōji is Kappabashi Street where you can find any number of unique Japanese cooking utensils, lacquerware, and even the wax or plastic food models used for restaurant display. A shopping area to the north of the temple is where I went to buy bolts of cloth for fundoshi, traditional Japanese underwear. And the original 24 Kaikan, the only gay bath house in Tōkyō that admitted foreigners during the late 1980s, early 1990s AIDS panic in Japan, was also just a short walk from Sensōji.

Sensōji holds a particularly important role in my memories. The police box beside the temple’s Kaminarimon (at right in the photo) is where Hiro and I first met on the date that wasn’t supposed to be a date—it was a group outing that only he and I turned up for. We walked from there, through the food stalls set up behind Sensōji, to a shrine to the north called Ōtori Shrine, where three times every November vendors gather to sell kumade, literally bear hands, which a bamboo rakes loaded with good luck charms for successful businesses.

Sensōji is where Hiro and I buy protective amulets that keep us (and our car) safe. Sensōji is where Hiro rang in the New Year (quite literally—in Buddhist tradition, bells must be run 108 times, once for every failing that keeps humans from reaching nirvana, on New Year’s Eve) each year we were together in Japan: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998. And Sensōji is where Kwannon casts her benediction on the two of us, forever and always.