BUDDHISM IN THE AIZU REGION

In Aizu these days, Buddhism presents a low profile. Unlike temples in major tourist areas of Kyoto and Nara, Aizu temples rarely charge admission and are not overwhelmed with tour buses. Even when treasures from the Heian or Kamakura period are housed inside, temple buildings are often dark and locked--to see an image, one needs to roust the custodian, sometimes a next-door housewife. Within the major city of Aizu-Wakamatsu, many old temples were burned and their treasures destroyed by anti- Buddhist fanatics in the late nineteenth century. But Buddhism still has a presence here.

If you travel through farm country or the mountains of Aizu, you come across clusters of stone gravemarkers along the roadside or surrounded by rice fields. Small Buddhist images and five-tiered pagodas, some from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, suggest how closely tied were the Buddhist religion and human concerns with death and the afterlife. In Aizu as in other regions of Japan, Buddhism flourished when it answered these concerns, or when it soothed the anxieties of farmers waiting for rain, women about to give birth, or parents whose child was suffering from fever. Like Buddhist institutions throughout Japan, moreover, Aizu temples played an important role in the region's political, economic, and cultural life--managing farm land and village affairs, introducing new styles of art and new technology in the construction of buildings.

The nodes listed below provide detailed views of three Aizu temples, each representative of a different period in the history of Buddhism in the region: (1) Enichiji, the dominant presence in Aizu in the Heian age (2) Ganjōji, a center of pietistic Pure Land beliefs in medieval times (3) Sazaedō, an architectural tour-de-force and popular pilgrimage attraction in the Edo period.

For general information about Japanese Buddhism, click here.

For the story of the Emerald Buddha of Thailand and its temple, with some splendid photographs, click here.