Hyakusaiji Temple and the Buddhist Art of Omi

This autumn exhibition at the Miho Museum gathers the treasures of Hyakusaiji, a temple on the far side of the prefecture, together with sculpture, painting and documents from elsewhere in Omi, the old name for the province that is now Shiga. Ninety-three works are shown, sixteen of them Important Cultural Properties.

The temple

Hyakusaiji stands at Higashiomi on the western foot of the Suzuka mountains, above the plain once called Gamono, with Lake Biwa beyond it. Tradition holds that Prince Shotoku founded it after a sign was given to him.

The land below it was opened by clans descended from settlers from the continent, chief among them the Echi Hata, and the temple is thought to have been founded by them in the seventh or eighth century. It grew afterwards under the Tendai school until it had many sub-temples under it and was the chief temple of the district.

Oda Nobunaga used it as a place of prayer and then destroyed it: in the Tensho years the whole mountain was burned. Before that the Portuguese missionary Luis Frois had seen it and called it Paraiso na Terra, a paradise on earth. The main hall that stands now was rebuilt in 1650 and is an Important Cultural Property, and the temple's history has been one of fires and rebuildings.

The hidden image

The principal image of Hyakusaiji is a hibutsu, an image kept from view and shown only rarely or not at all. It is a standing eleven-headed Kannon carved in wood, an Important Cultural Property, and study of it has established that it was made by the late eighth century. That settled a long argument about how old the temple is, and confirmed that both an ancient temple of Omi and its image have come down together.

The same ticket also admits to a separate display in the north wing, drawn from the museum's own collection and unconnected with the temple, on the courtly culture of the Kanei era.