Hyakusaiji

Hyakusaiji is a Tendai temple on the western slope of the Suzuka mountains at Higashiomi in Shiga Prefecture, one of the three temples known together as the Koto Sanzan, on the eastern side of Lake Biwa. It was founded in 606 and is held to be the oldest Buddhist temple in Omi, the old province that is now Shiga. The grounds are a National Historic Site.

Temple tradition holds that Prince Shotoku founded it. Staying at the foot of Taroboyama, he is said to have seen a strange light in the mountains to the east each evening. Going up into them the next morning, he found a great cedar with its upper half cut away and a company of monkeys laying fruit before it. Taking the tree for a sacred one, he carved an eleven-headed Kannon into the standing trunk, and the image is called the Ueki Kannon, the Kannon of the living tree, for that reason.

The name of the temple points elsewhere. Hyakusai is the Japanese reading of Baekje, one of the kingdoms of the Korean peninsula, and the temple is thought to have begun as the clan temple of settlers from there, who had brought Buddhism and much else with them into this part of Omi.

When Enryakuji was founded on Mount Hiei, Hyakusaiji became Tendai and grew until it was called the little Hieizan of the eastern lake, with a great many sub-temples under it. Fire and war took it several times over the medieval centuries and each time it was rebuilt.

Oda Nobunaga made it his prayer hall in 1568 and burned it to the ground in 1573. The whole mountain was lost. Only the principal image survived, carried out to the Fudo hall at the inner sanctuary before the fire reached it.

Rebuilding was permitted by an edict of the Empress Meisho in 1637, and paid for by subscription and by gifts from the shogunate's councillors, from Kasuga no Tsubone, and from the lord of Hikone. The main hall, the Nio gate and the red gate went up in 1650 and stand today.