Nittai-ji, Kakuōzan

photo by 円周率３パーセント · CC BY-SA 4.0

photo by Roman SUZUKI · CC BY 3.0

No Buddhist school owns it: nineteen take turns as abbot, 3 years each.

On 15 June 1900, in the royal palace in Bangkok, a Japanese delegation received from the hands of King Chulalongkorn of Siam a portion of the bones of the historical Buddha. To keep them, Japanese Buddhism did something never done before: thirteen schools and fifty-six branches came to an agreement and in 1904 built a temple that belongs to none of them. To this day the heads of nineteen schools pass the office of abbot between them, three years each.

Kakuōzan Nittai-ji stands on a hill in Chikusa Ward, at the top of a slope lined with shops. The name joins the characters for Japan and Thailand (at the time of its founding, Siam). In 1898 at Piprahwa, in British India, bones attributed to the Buddha were found; they passed to the Siamese royal house, which gave part of them to Japan together with a gilded statue, now the temple's principal image. The buildings you see are post-war; the relics are kept in a separate stupa, that is, the mound that in Buddhism holds the remains, uphill from the grounds. It is the only Japanese temple that does not belong to a single school.

ℹ️ Gate open 5:00–16:30, office 9:00–14:00, free admission, no closing days. The 21st of each month is the day of the monk Kūkai, who founded the Shingon school in the ninth century: the approach road becomes pedestrian-only and fills with stalls, and on that day you cannot park between the road and the temple, so you come by metro to Kakuōzan Station on the Higashiyama Line. The busiest day of the year is 21 December. The climb from the station to the grounds is uphill all the way.

🚉 Kakuōzan · 7 min walk

Sources: nittaiji.or.jp · nittaiji.or.jp · nittaiji.or.jp

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