Negoro-ji

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Negoro Temple: Pagoda and "Great Teaching Hall" ( Dai-denpō-dō )
Negoro ("Negru") in a map of Asia by A. Ortelius (1572)
The Negoro Temple in the early 19th century (from: Kii no kuni meisho zue )
Negoro jug for hot water (Birmingham Museum of Art)

The Negoro Temple ( Japanese 根 来 寺 , Negoro-ji , also Negoro-dera ) is a Buddhist temple complex in the north of the urban area of Iwade ( Wakayama Prefecture , Japan ) surrounded by the peaks of the Katsuragi Mountains .

Overview

In 1087 the 'Bergasket ' En no Gyōja founded the "Bufuku Temple" ( 豊 福寺 , Bufuku-ji ) here. The small temple was one of those lands that Tennō Toba handed over to the monk Kakuban (1095–1143) in 1132 . Since that time it has been called the Negoro Temple. Kakuban, also revered as Kōgyō Daishi ( 興 教 大師 ), had made the restoration of the then strongly secular Shingon Buddhism his life's work. Although he succeeded in the nearby Kongōbu Temple ( Kōyasan ), the center of teaching and practice of this school, the rise to a leading position, in which he initially achieved some success. But in the following, sometimes violent clashes, his opponents finally gained the upper hand. Kakuban moved with his followers to Negoro, where he blessed the temporal a few years later. Later attempts to reconcile the two camps were unsuccessful, and Negoro developed into the center of the "New Shingon Doctrine" ( 新 義 真言 宗 , Shingi Shingonshū ).

The associated lands produced a huge income in rice, which made the expansion considerably easier. Towards the end of the Muromachi period , the complex with all the secondary and sub-temples had grown to 450 buildings (according to another thesis, it should have been as many as 2,700). The scholarship of the monastic elite there was also noticed by the Jesuits, who have been missionary in Japan since 1549. In their writings, Negoro appears as the seat of the largest 'university' in Japan. Negoro also appears on the early European maps of Japan as “Negru”, “Neguru” or “Negru academia”.

At that time Negoro, like the great temples of other schools, was heavily militarized. The number of monk warriors ( sōhei ) here is said to have been ten thousand. After the arrival of the first firearms in 1643, it was not long before the artful monks made this revolutionary long-range weapon themselves. The rifle unit equipped with this went down in history as the 'Negoro Troop' ( Negoro-gumi ). The Jesuit father Caspar Vilela (1525–1572), who visited the temple, saw parallels here with the European Order of Malta . He was deeply impressed by the martial arts, but complained that many neglected the prayers and some had not even taken a monk's vows.

The military involvement in the hegemonic struggles raging at the time ultimately became the temple's undoing. In 1585 the general Toyotomi Hideyoshi smashed the Negoro rifle troops and moved into Negoro. Only a few buildings survived the fires that followed, some of which were started by Hideyoshi's victorious troops and some of the defeated monks before they withdrew. After Hideyoshi's death and the rise of the Tokugawa , some buildings were rebuilt in 1623, but the complex and the intellectual influence never regained its former size. The walk from the Great Gate over the wide, undeveloped area to today's core part gives an impression of the extent of the decline.

The red 'lacquer work' ( Negoro-nuri ) once developed by the craftsmen of the Negoro Temple have survived on the Kii Peninsula to this day.

literature

  • CR Boxer: The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 . University of California Press [et. a.], Berkeley [et al. a.] 1951.
  • Olof G. Lidin: Tanegashima: the arrival of Europe in Japan . Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen 2002.
  • Stephen Turnbull: Japanese Warrior Monks AD 949-1603 . Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2003.
  • Henny Van der Veere: A study into the thought of Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban . Hotei Publishing, Leiden 2000.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Excavations carried out in 1976 showed that the facility once extended over four million square meters. The lacquer vessels, weapons, cult implements, porcelain, ceramics, etc. found in the process are exhibited in the nearby municipal folklore museum.
  2. ↑ More in Lidin (2002), 105f. While the artisans in nearby Sakai and Nagahama ( Lake Biwa ) sold their cans to anyone who could pay for them, in Negoro they only produced for their own needs.
  3. ↑ Turnbull (2003), p. 248f.
  4. ↑ The details of this campaign are still not clear enough.

Pictures of the plant

  • The 'Great Gate' ( Daimon ), rebuilt in 1850

  • Pagoda from 1496 ( national treasure , height 40 m, width 15 m)

  • 'Hall of the Great Teacher' ( Daishi-dō ) from the 15th century with a statue of the founder of the Shingon school Kōbō Daishi

  • 'Great Teaching Hall' ( Dai-dempō-dō ), rebuilt in 1827

  • Interior of the 'Great Teaching Hall' with the five meter high statues of Kongō-Satta (Skr. Vajrasattva), Dainichi-Nyorai (Skr. Maha-Vairocana) and Butchō-Sonshō (Skr. Vijayosnisa)

  • Kakuban Mausoleum

Web links

Coordinates: 34 ° 17 ′ 13.7 ″  N , 135 ° 18 ′ 59.9 ″  E