Day 6 in Japan: The World’s largest and oldest wooden buildings in Nara

We took the express train from Kyoto to Nara and ate our storebought breakfast on board. Optimising our time this way allowed us to be among the first people through the door when Kofoku Temple opened at nine o’clock. We bought the combined ticket for the whole complex, which encompasses the Central Golden Hall, the Main Hall, and the National Treasure Museum. I remembered that the highlight of this particular part of Nara was supposed to be its five-storied pagoda, but I could not see it anywhere. Only when I opened the map to find our location did I realise that the ugly grey building we had been ignoring next to the Main Hall was scaffolding draped in grey canvas.

I found the National Treasure Museum reasonably interesting. Its centrepiece is a wooden, five-metre-tall Thousand-Armed Kannon from the thirteenth century, but there are a number of striking smaller statues such as the ten great disciples, the twelve heavenly generals, and the pair of demonic lamp-bearers Ryutoki and Tentoki. Another pair of statues, the Kongo Rikishi, are mythical warriors. One has his mouth open as though making the sound “a,” the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, while the other has his mouth closed as though saying the last letter – “hum.” Together, they symbolise the beginning and end of the universe.

From Kofuku Temple, we walked along the main road east and through Nara Park to Nara’s most striking sight: the Great Buddha Hall of Todai Temple. Its huge roof with golden shibi – two horn-shaped points at opposite points of the rooftop – looms large above the treetops even at a distance, but its scale can only be fully appreciated as one passes through the giant Southern Gate with its fearsome wooden guardians. Until 1998, the massive eighth-century building was the largest wooden building in the world, only recently surpassed by other structures including a baseball stadium in Japan. The size of the building is only appropriate, as it houses the world’s largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana, also known as Dainichi Nyorai in Japanese – the “Great Sun Thus Come One.”

Nara, however, is perhaps better known for its tame deer, who freely roam the city’s park and surrounding areas. They have been trained by Japanese people to reciprocate bows in exchange for snacks – rice wafers that are sold at little stalls along the paths – which has resulted in many deer seeking out tourists on the streets and bowing at them unbidden in hopes of a reward. Ciaran and I had a long discussion about whether it is ethical to bow to a deer and then, receiving the same courtesy from it, not giving it a snack. I maintained that by bowing to a trained deer, one enters an unwritten social contract with it that must be honoured, while Ciaran argued that deer are just deer. He also spent much of our visit bemoaning the fact that the deer have become too used to humans and delighted in seeing that they still had some instincts left when they ran away from a barking dog.

To say a little more about Nara itself, it was the capital of Japan from 710 to 784 with a brief five-year hiatus in the 740s. It was Japan’s first permanent capital, preceded by periods when the capital moved around between Nara, Yamato, Osaka, Kyoto, and a few others based on the preferences of emperors. In the Heian period, the capital moved to Kyoto, where it stayed from 794 until 1868 with a few brief interludes, but even after Nara lost its status as Japan’s capital, it remained an important religious centre and pilgrimage destination. The city was modelled after the Tang capital Chang’an, being laid out on a grid with the palace bisecting the city into the “Right Capital” and “Left Capital.”

I was tired of navigating and asked Ciaran to lead us for the rest of the day after we made it to Kasuga-taisha. The Shinto shrine dates to the eighth century and is central to the relationship between Nara and its deer. Legend has it that the first kami (or spirit) of Kasuga-taisha rode a white deer to the top of Mount Mikasa to protect Nara, and that a temple was dedicated to the kami at its base. Ever since then, Nara’s deer have been held to be the messengers of the Shinto gods. The real history of Kasuga-taisha appears far more prosaic, having been established by the powerful Fujiwara clan and gaining prominence thanks to the clan’s influence within the imperial government.

We lunched on onigiri next to a lake at the edge of the park while watching child after child chase after the idle pigeons. None of them caught any, but one of the pigeons flew into Ciaran’s face. What I learned from this lunch was that it takes more onigiri to sate the stomach than it takes to grow sick of onigiri. When we finished, we walked over to the train station and took the first train down to Horyu-ji station in the nearby town of Ikaruga. Seeing as taking the bus would have taken just as long as walking, we decided to tough it out and make the twenty-minute journey along the very straight, unshaded road to our next destination.

I found Horyu-ji to be a welcome change of pace from Nara and Kyoto. Instead of hordes of unkempt tourists, the temple was beset by big school groups in their characteristically formal white button-downs and suit trousers, which lent it an almost festive atmosphere. What they were doing a on school trip on a Sunday (and why they seemed to be enjoying themselves nonetheless) remains a mystery to me though. With nothing else planned for the rest of the day, we slackened our pace and roughly copied the routes we saw the school groups take. One of the shrines, an employee told us, had just brought out an ancient statue that is only revealed twice every year.

Founded in 607 by Prince Shotoku (one of the major figures responsible for the popularisation of Buddhism in Japan), Horyu-ji is among the oldest Buddhist temples in Japan. Having only succumbed to an extensive fire once – and that only shortly after its founding – the temple is believed to be the world’s oldest wooden building, with walls that date back thirteen hundred years. It is dedicated to Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of Healing, also referred to as the Medicine Buddha. The complex consists of two major courtyards, the western one of which contains Horyu-ji’s iconic five-story pagoda, though the ticket for the complex also includes admission to a third site: the museum of artefacts and relics from the temple.