Zenkoji Temple Will Be at Center of the World Stage

When Japanese emperors and shoguns grew weary of the world--or their power-hungry relatives grew weary of them--they would shave their heads and retreat to temples in a custom called “throwing away the world.”

Takakazu Fukushima, too, has quit his prestigious job as a professor at Yokohama National, shaved his head and donned Buddhist robes in order to succeed his father as a priest in the family temple.

But instead of throwing away the world, Fukushima has become an Olympic media star, the English-speaking face behind Nagano’s most famous landmark, Zenkoji Temple.

The 50-year-old former chemical engineer, himself a symbol of how both Japan and its Buddhism are evolving, is also the producer of a play that debuts Monday and aims to enlighten foreigners about the temple’s rich history and charismatic faith.

Zenkoji Temple, said to hold the oldest image of Buddha in Japan, has burned down 11 times. Its 12th incarnation, completed in 1707 and now designated a national treasure, sits atop a slope at the base of Nagano’s steep mountains. Like a medieval European cathedral, it is both the spiritual and the commercial heart of the city, attracting about 12 million pilgrims and tourists last year.

Now the temple is swarming with television cameras that will soon make its graceful two-tiered roof instantly identifiable to the world.

But Zenkoji’s most prized attraction, the golden statue reportedly sent from Korea to Japan in 552, won’t be on display for Olympic visitors. It hasn’t been seen by human eyes since the late 16th century, when a government official was sent to check whether the Buddha that had been hidden for almost a millennium in fact existed.

“A rumor got started that Zenkoji did not have the real thing,” Fukushima said. The official’s chop, or personal mark, which was found still intact on an outer wrapping of the statue by priests a generation ago, is testimony to the fact that the original statue still lies inside.

“Lots of scholars doubt this, but we believe,” Fukushima said with a smile.

Doubts are perhaps inevitable. Temple lore has it that the statue was dumped into the ocean or a canal, perhaps in what is now Osaka, by aristocrats who opposed the introduction of a foreign god to Japan. It was rescued and brought to Nagano in 652 by a peasant named Wakaomi Azumando Honda Yoshimitsu, the founder of Zenkoji.

The temple began hiding the statue in 654, said Shuei Wakaomi, the chief executive of Zenkoji, who claims to be the 35th-generation direct descendant of the founder. There are many theories about why it was hidden--to protect it from thieves or vandals, to increase its mystery and prestige, or simply because Japan had already developed a tradition of making what is most precious in its culture elusive.

A copy of the statue was made in the 13th or 14th century and taken around Japan in order to help spread the folk belief in the image’s miraculous powers.

“Don’t ask me how they made a copy of the image without seeing it,” Fukushima said. Never mind. For several centuries now, the copy has been displayed to the public once every seventh year, for only two months, in a festival that draws visitors from all over Japan.

The original statue has several times been removed by powerful Japanese warlords, but each one met a bad end, Fukushima said, and the statue was ultimately returned to its home in Nagano.

Temple lore has it that the gold used to make the original statue was taken from a dragon’s palace under the sea by a follower of the original Indian Buddha. Fukushima, who holds a doctorate in chemical engineering and spent nearly four years teaching at U.S. universities, has done his own scientific sleuthing about its substance. Using his measurement of the statue’s weight, which is secret, and its dimensions, which are known, he said he has determined the material used to cast the sacred image.

Is it gold?

“No comment,” Fukushima said. “Temple legend says it is made of gold.”

The Japanese public’s fondness for Zenkoji seems to be surviving the age of the microchip. The temple’s brand of Buddhism is unusual in Japan. Zenkoji has no official patron, belongs to no sect, has female priests and has always allowed women to enter, even when they were banned from setting foot inside other Buddhist temples, Wakaomi said.

It has traditionally been supported by donations from ordinary citizens and pilgrims. Worshipers believe they can earn a place in heaven merely by chanting, “I believe in merciful Buddha.”

Zenkoji’s priests believe their emphasis on peace, nondiscrimination and openness to worshipers of any faith is in true harmony with the Olympic philosophy.

“The Olympic spirit is intended to transcend religion, politics and nationality, and promote peace,” Wakaomi said. As a symbol of the temple’s goodwill, the priests decided to allow CBS to build a broadcast studio on the temple grounds. Security has been beefed up to protect the huge crowds that are expected, but the temple has recruited scores of volunteers to explain its philosophy in a number of foreign languages.

At Fukushima’s suggestion, the temple recently added a ramp atop its steep wooden stairs to make it accessible to the disabled.

Zenkoji is administered by priests from 39 families, all of whom run smaller family temples clustered in a beautifully preserved neighborhood on the slope beneath the temple. To make ends meet, many of the family temples, including Fukushima’s, also function as small inns that are now crammed to the gills with visiting dignitaries.

In the century since Buddhist priests have been permitted to marry, the family temples have been inherited father-to-son. The low Japanese birthrate and a dearth of sons who want to become priests is creating a succession problem, however.

Fukushima promised his father he would one day return to his family temple, but he does not intend to extract the same pledge from his two teenage sons.

“If they wish to come back someday, that’s OK, but if they don’t, they will have to leave our family temple,” Fukushima said. If so, an outsider will have to be adopted into the family or a priest will be recruited from elsewhere, he said. Although women have taken over some Buddhist temples, Fukushima’s sect still insists on only males.

Fukushima said he decided to return to Nagano in 1991, when he saw the crowds of cheering people who had come to Zenkoji to celebrate the city’s selection as the site for the XVIII Olympic Winter Games.

He has publicly criticized the Japanese Olympic Organizing Committee for paying too much attention to the infrastructure for the Games and not enough to how the city will be affected in their aftermath. But as he rushed around the temple Friday, performing his religious duties, preparing for the production of the play about Zenkoji’s history and giving interviews to one foreign media outlet after another, it was clear he was enjoying the intermingling of ancient Japan and the global village in his no-longer-sleepy hometown.

“I am a chemical engineer,” he said. “I wanted to observe the process of change.”