Kofukuji Temple

Kofukuji stands on Teramachi, the street of temples in Nagasaki, behind a vermilion gate. It was the first of the Chinese temples built in the city, and the Obaku school of Zen began here.

The temple was founded in 1620 by people from the Nanjing region of China who had settled in Nagasaki, which is why it is also called the Nanjing temple. They put up a hall for Mazu, the goddess who protects those at sea, and a hall for the Buddha.

Chinese ships were coming to Nagasaki in numbers at a time when Christianity was banned, and a Chinese temple served two purposes at once: it showed that the community were not Christians, and it gave them a temple of their own for funerals and for the sea goddess.

The main hall

The Daiohoden was built in 1632 by the second abbot, Mokusu Nyojo, who is also remembered for building the arched stone bridge in the middle of the city known as the spectacles bridge. Fire and storms wrecked the hall more than once, and what stands now was rebuilt in 1883.

The materials were brought from China and the work was done by Chinese craftsmen, in the southern Chinese manner. There is carving on the pillars and beams, round windows latticed in a pattern like cracking ice, an arched ceiling and gourd-shaped ornaments on the roof. It is an Important Cultural Property, as is the gate brought here from the old Chinese quarter.

Ingen

The third abbot, Itsunen, was a painter, and the Chinese style of painting he taught passed to Japanese artists after him. He and others wanted a senior Chinese monk to come, and in 1654 they brought over Ingen, who became the fourth abbot and founded the Obaku school in Japan.

Ingen carried a good deal of China with him. The beans that bear his name in Japanese, the wooden fish drum used in chanting, seals, steeped green tea and the vegetarian banquet called fucha ryori all came in with him.