Buddhist Art of Bungo: Fuki-ji's Ōdō and the Usuki Stone Buddhas

In the province of Bungo, today's Ōita Prefecture, two very different works of Buddhist art survive that date largely from the late Heian period. On the Kunisaki Peninsula stands the Ōdō of Fuki-ji, a wooden hall whose painted interior was made to show the Pure Land of the Buddha Amida. Further south, near Usuki, groups of Buddhist figures were carved directly into the rock of hillsides.

Both are now National Treasures. This article follows what the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the two cities where they stand say about how they were made.

A peninsula of temples

According to Bungotakada City, a group of temples called Rokugō Manzan developed in the valleys of six districts of the peninsula. The temples were divided by purpose into three kinds: those for study, those for religious practice, and those for spreading the teaching.

The Agency's Japan Heritage story says that as many as 65 temples were opened in the six districts. Bungotakada City explains that the peninsula was a place of practice for the Tendai teaching transmitted to Usa Jingū and its temple Mirokuji, and that it was one of the first places in Kyushu where Buddhism flourished. Influenced by Usa and the deity Hachiman and blended with mountain religion, its culture strongly mixed the worship of kami and buddhas.

The Japan Heritage story adds that when esoteric Buddhism reached Kunisaki in the Heian period, the oni (demons) of local belief came to be identified with Fudō Myōō, a Buddhist deity usually shown with a quietly angry expression. It notes that many of the peninsula's Fudō images have round, gentle faces.

The story counts the Kumano cliff carvings in Bungotakada among these gentle images. At Kumano, the Agency records a buddha figure about 6.8 meters tall, of which only the upper body emerges from the rock, and, about 12.5 meters to the west, a Fudō about 8.3 meters tall. It regards both as Heian-period works, the grandest of Bungo's many fine cliff carvings.

The Ōdō of Fuki-ji

Fuki-ji lies in the valley of the Fuki River. Temple tradition says it was founded in 718, in the Nara period, and names a monk as its founder. The Agency notes, however, that the present hall shows the building methods of the late Heian period, and its database lists the hall under the late Heian period (1086 to 1184).

The hall is three bays wide and four bays deep, with simple square pillars. Its roof now rises to a single point, but an old ridge beam with an ink inscription of 1353 survives, and the Agency notes that this suggests the roof was once hipped.

Inside, four round pillars surround an altar under a coffered ceiling. Buddhas and bodhisattvas, flower motifs and scrolling vines were painted in rich colors on each part of the interior, and a Pure Land mandala was painted on the wall behind the main image.

The main image is a seated Amida. According to Bungotakada City, the wooden Amida and the wall paintings, both Important Cultural Properties, together express the paradise that people of the Heian period imagined.

The Agency calls the hall a good example of how Amida halls, popular in the Heian period, spread across Japan. Citing a dictionary of National Treasures, it also calls the hall the oldest surviving structure in the Kyushu region; Bungotakada City describes it as the oldest wooden building in Kyushu.

A temple through the centuries

According to the Agency, Fuki-ji first appears in a document of 1223 as the "Amida-ji" of Fuki, when it served for generations as a temple of prayer for the family of the chief priests of Usa.

By the Nanbokuchō period in the fourteenth century, it had become a branch temple of the Tendai Rokugō Manzan. It was then under the influence of a family that, with the Kikuchi of Higo, supported an imperial prince, and this family carried out a major repair of the hall.

Bungotakada City describes a stone slab beside the hall dated 1361, made for the seventh-year memorial of a monk who appears in the ink inscription on the old ridge beam and who took part in the repair of 1353 as head of studies.

Stone stupas carved with Sanskrit seed syllables, one with a 1242 inscription that the city calls the oldest in Bungotakada, show a faith centered on Amida mixed with other esoteric beliefs. The Agency counts five Kamakura-period stupas of this type and two Kunisaki pagodas around the hall.

The Agency also notes something unusual in the layout. Rokugō Manzan temples usually place a shrine to the Rokusho Gongen and an inner sanctuary behind the lecture hall, but Fuki-ji does not. It takes this as a sign that the temple was not part of Rokugō Manzan when it was founded.

The stone Buddhas of Usuki

The Usuki carvings were cut into exposed welded tuff on hill slopes west of the town. According to the Agency, they fall into four main groups: Furuzono, Sannōyama, and the first and second Hoki groups. Each figure was carved in high relief within a fairly shallow niche.

The Agency describes them as the largest in scale and the finest in workmanship of the Heian-period cliff carvings concentrated in Bungo.

Local legends about a wealthy couple and about a monk said to have made the carvings are tied to the mystery of their making, but Usuki City calls these only legends.

At Furuzono, a Dainichi that the Agency describes as jōroku in size is at the center of thirteen figures. Usuki City explains that the hand gesture of the Dainichi shows the group to be a Diamond World mandala. The Agency notes that the heads of the central figure and of one bodhisattva were carved fully free of the rock, and that parts of the lower bodies, where the rock was too thin, were made from separate pieces.

The Sannōyama group is a seated buddha with two attendant buddhas. The Agency sees its rather simple style as showing the level of stone carving in the region in the late Heian period. Usuki City says that, according to tradition, it was carved by local people following the sculptors of the capital, and that the carvers watched the grain of the rock to avoid cracks.

In the Hoki groups, rows of seated buddhas and a seated Amida of jōroku size with two attendants show what the Agency calls the gentle Fujiwara style, bearing comparison with fine wooden sculpture of the time. The city notes that a niche of Jizō and the Ten Kings keeps its colors well.

Restoration and recognition

By 1962, when the carvings were designated Important Cultural Properties, many were badly damaged, and heads and other parts had broken away. In conservation work from fiscal 1980 to fiscal 1993, even small fragments were rejoined to the rock. The head of the Furuzono Dainichi, which had been temporarily placed in front of the niche, was returned to its original place.

The Agency says this work led to their designation as a National Treasure in 1995, when 59 figures were listed. Two guardian figures at Furuzono were added in 2017, and Usuki City now counts 61 figures in four groups.

According to the city, they were the first cliff carvings in Japan to become a National Treasure. The area is also a Special Historic Site.

Places to visit

Fuki-ji is in Bungotakada City and is a Tendai temple today. A shrine of 1761 and a main hall of 1715 stand beside the Ōdō. Bungotakada City invites visitors to look at the stone monuments along the approach, including two house-shaped stone shrines carved with the Ten Kings who judge the dead.

In a project of the Agency in fiscal 2015 and 2016, a color-restoration copy of some of the painted patterns, which Bungotakada City says reflects recent research and comes closer to the original colors, was made and delivered to the temple.

The Usuki Stone Buddhas are in the Fukada and Nakao districts of Usuki City, which the Agency lists as the managing body of the site. Check the official websites of the temple and of Usuki City for opening times and conditions before visiting.