06 Chapter 05 HJB:Master Testpages HJB 10/10/07 11:26 Page 80

CHAPTER 5

FIELDWORK IN



Today, kamakura is a tourist city with a population of about 170,000 (which is the 131st among the 725 cities in ). during the (1185–1333), however, the city ranked as second in Japan and was specifically the centre of the world. one of the epoch-making events in Japanese history was the establishment of the kamakura shogunate (a samurai regime) by minamoto yoritomo 源頼朝 (1147–99). until that time, the political, economic and cultural powers had been concentrated solely in Heian-kyo# where the emperor resided. minamoto yoritomo, however, mobilized the samurai and established a military regime at kamakura, making the kanto# region the political centre. members of the minamoto and the Ho#jo# clans controlled the kamakura regime until 1225. The administration was managed mainly by who supported the shoguns. The Ho#jo# was the family from which yoritomo’s wife, masako 政子 (1157–1225), had come. Thus, the and the Ho#jo# clan respectively played a very significant role in the kamakura shogunate, which resulted in the construction of many temples associated with the two clans.This is because in those days religion and politics were closely (if not, inseparably) related. The Ho#jo# family had built four important temples – kencho#ji, Engakuji, ko#myo#ji and Gokurakuji, while minamoto yoritomo founded Tsurugaoka Hachimangu#.

80 06 Chapter 05 HJB:Master Testpages HJB 10/10/07 11:26 Page 81

Fieldwork in Kamakura

The ‘Great Buddha’ of Kamakura The ‘Great Buddha’, or daibutsu, sits in the precincts of the ko#tokuin Temple, known officially as ‘daiisan-ko#tokuin- sho#jo#senji’, which is a temple of the Jo#do (Pure Land) sect of Buddhism. The present kamakura daibutsu is a statue of amita#bha Buddha with a height of 11.36 metres and a gross weight of 121 tonnes. although made of bronze and gold, it is not shining gold because the green rust which covers the statue makes it look blue-green to our eyes. The daibutsu is a very striking image, partly because it is slightly hunched forward, which, according to historians, indicates the influ- ence of the typical style of the statue of amita#bha Buddha produced in song dynasty China. The statue of the kamakura Buddha is also indicative of the close relationship between China and Japan that existed in those days. The kamakura daibutsu, unlike the To#daiji daibutsu, is not placed in a daibutsu-den, or the building for great Buddha statues. it just sits there exposed to the elements. Naturally, when originally built, the daibutsu sat in a daibutsu-den. initially, the official name of the temple was ‘daibutsu-den’ and there was no other building that belonged to the temple except the daibutsu- den for housing the statute of the amita#bha Buddha. after the destruction of the daibutsu-den by the tsunami caused by the meio# earthquake of 1498 (meio# 7), the building was never rebuilt, and the daibutsu has remained exposed to the elements ever since.yuten of the shiba Zo#jo#ji in directed repair work in the eighteenth century, but the daibutu-den was never reconstructed. it was the twenty-third day of the third month of 1238 (rekinin 1), when a Buddhist monk named Jo#ko# began the kanjin campaign (religious fund-raising through public dona- tions) and initiated the construction of the kamakura daibutsu. The daibutsu sits in a place called Fukazawa, and the valley where the daibutsu is situated used to be called the daibutsu-ga- yatsu (daibutsu valley), located on the western boundary of kamakura.The boundary areas at that time were a hellish place, where corpses were scattered and gravely ill men and beggars lurked. many refugees gathered there in times of famine. For example, during the great famine of 1274 (Bun-ei 11), a large

81