The Great Buddha of Tōdai-ji: Made, Lost and Remade

In the main hall of Tōdai-ji in Nara sits a bronze Buddha 14.98 meters tall. It represents Vairocana (Rushana in Japanese), which the temple explains as the Buddha whose light of wisdom and compassion shines everywhere. Emperor Shōmu called for its creation in 743, and it was dedicated in 752.

The statue that visitors see today, however, is not simply an eighth-century work. The hall around it burned twice in wars, in 1180 and 1567, and the statue and hall were restored each time.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the National Treasure statue as a work of both the Nara and Edo periods. This article follows its making, its losses and the people who brought it back.

Dates with a month and day before 1873 in this article follow Japan's old lunisolar calendar, which was replaced by the Gregorian calendar in that year.

An emperor's vow

Tōdai-ji grew out of a small temple founded in 728 to pray for the spirit of Crown Prince Motoi, Emperor Shōmu's son. When Shōmu ordered a provincial temple (kokubun-ji) for every province in 741, this temple became the provincial temple of Yamato. As the head of that network, Tōdai-ji prayed for peace in the land and also trained scholar monks.

The temple's own history describes Shōmu's reign as troubled. Power struggles, a smallpox epidemic that took the lives of Empress Kōmyō's brothers, and a rebellion in Kyushu followed one another for more than ten years. In the temple's view, Shōmu came to see Buddhism as the way to heal such times and bring peace to the nation and happiness to its people.

On the 15th day of the 10th month of 743, at his palace at Shigaraki, Shōmu issued his edict for a gilt-bronze image of Vairocana. The edict wished that all living things, animals and plants alike, might flourish. It also asked for willing help: anyone who wished to help build the image, even with a single branch of grass or a handful of earth, was to be allowed to do so, and officials were told not to burden the people by forcing contributions.

Casting the Great Buddha

After the court returned to Heijō-kyō in 745, work began in Nara on the 23rd day of the 8th month of that year, on the grounds of Kinshō-ji, the temple that came before Tōdai-ji. The bronze body was cast in eight stages over three years and finished on the 24th day of the 10th month of 749. Work on the hall began in 747 and ended in 751, and the gilding of the statue started in the 3rd month of 752.

The eye-opening ceremony was held with great splendor on the 9th day of the 4th month of 752. Many people made the work possible.

The monk Gyōki gathered donations and the help of ordinary people, and Rōben served as the first chief abbot. Tōdai-ji is also called the temple founded by "four saints": Shōmu, Gyōki, Rōben, and Bodhisena, a monk from India who led the eye-opening.

The fire of 1180 and Chōgen

As early as 855, the statue's head fell off in an earthquake and was repaired.

By the end of the Heian period, Tōdai-ji had been drawn into disputes with the Taira clan over its estates. In the 12th month of 1180, forces under Taira no Shigehira attacked the temples of Nara, and the fires that followed destroyed the Great Buddha Hall and most of Tōdai-ji.

The Nara National Museum describes the damage: the hall burned down, the Great Buddha was badly broken, and many halls and the images inside them were reduced to ashes. Kōfukuji was also heavily damaged; its chronology records that it burned completely on the 28th day of the 12th month.

Rebuilding began the next year. In 1181 the monk Chōgen, then 61, was appointed to lead the fundraising, and he gave more than twenty years to the work with support from Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa and Minamoto no Yoritomo.

With the Song Chinese caster Chen Heqing, he repaired the head and left hand, and the statue was dedicated again in 1185. After Suō Province (now Yamaguchi Prefecture) was assigned to provide income for the project, work sped up, and the new hall was completed in 1195.

The present Great South Gate also comes from this rebuilding. Its ridgepole was raised in 1199, and it was completed in 1203 together with its two guardian figures, each just under 8.4 meters tall, which Unkei, Kaikei and other sculptors carved in only 69 days.

According to the Nara National Museum, the rebuilding gave rise to the realistic, energetic Kamakura sculpture of the Kei school and to a new building style called Daibutsuyō. A general dedication of the restored temple was held in 1203.

The fire of 1567 and Kōkei

In 1567, during fighting between the Miyoshi and Matsunaga forces, fire again destroyed the Great Buddha Hall and most of the temple. Only a few buildings survived, among them the Nigatsudō, the Hokkedō, the Great South Gate, the Tegai Gate, the Shōsōin and the bell tower. The Nara National Museum notes that the Buddha's head melted.

The country was at war, and only simple repairs were possible. The statue was given a temporary head of wood covered with copper sheets. A shelter built over it later fell in a strong wind, and according to the Nara National Museum, the Buddha remained without a hall for more than a hundred years.

The monk Kōkei (1648–1705) resolved to restore it after seeing the Buddha exposed to the rain. In 1684 he received permission from the shogunate to raise funds across the country.

From 1686 the head and eighteen lotus petals of the pedestal were recast, and the statue was dedicated again in 1692. Kōkei then turned to the hall, but he died in 1705, aged 58, before it was finished.

Finding timber was hard. Nara Prefecture, drawing on a chronicle of Kōkei's life, says that the giant beam for the roof had to come from a red pine at Shiratori Shrine in present-day Miyazaki Prefecture, then in Satsuma territory. The tree was hauled overland to the sea, shipped to Kobe, and carried up the Yodo and Kizu rivers to Nara.

The new hall was dedicated in 1709. Money was short, so it was built only seven bays wide instead of the eleven bays (about 88 meters) of the earlier halls, roughly 60 percent of the original width, though its height and depth were kept. The Nara National Museum adds that the restoration brought many worshippers from all over Japan to Nara, and suggests that Kōkei laid the foundations of Nara as a city of visitors.

The Great Buddha today

The present hall is 57.012 meters wide, 50.480 meters deep and 48.742 meters high, and the temple calls it one of the largest wooden buildings in the world. It was taken apart and reassembled, with steel reinforcement, between 1906 and 1912, and repaired again from 1973 to 1980.

The statue, too, mixes periods. Tōdai-ji says its present face and head were made anew in the Edo-period restoration.

The often-quoted figure of 966 curls of hair refers to the Nara-period head. A laser survey by researchers at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science estimated that the present head originally carried 492 curls.

Some things came through both fires. The octagonal lantern in front of the hall dates from the temple's founding, with openwork panels showing bodhisattvas playing music and lions running through clouds.

Tōdai-ji is one of the eight components of the World Heritage property "Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara," which the World Heritage Committee decided to inscribe in December 1998. It is also a working temple. Rituals such as the Shuni-e at the Nigatsudō continue, and people come from across Japan and abroad to worship.

Places to visit

Tōdai-ji is in Nara City. Besides the Great Buddha Hall and the octagonal lantern, visitors can see the Great South Gate and its guardian figures.

The Shunjōdō, which Kōkei built to honor Chōgen, houses the National Treasure seated statue of Chōgen; its interior is opened only on a few days a year, so check Tōdai-ji's website. The Kōkei Path, a lane leading to the north-east corner of the hall, is lined with cedars and cypresses that, according to Nara Prefecture, Kōkei planted so that later repairs would not lack timber. The great bell in the bell tower, which Tōdai-ji says is traditionally dated to 752, the year of the eye-opening, weighs 26.3 tonnes.

Check Tōdai-ji's official website for opening hours and fees before you go.