Chūzen-ji Audio Guide

Chūzen Temple: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Chūzen Temple

   Welcome to Chūzen Temple, a Buddhist temple standing on the shore of Lake Chuzenji in the city of Nikkō, in Tochigi Prefecture. Its address is Nakamiyaushi, number 2578, in Nikkō. In Japanese the name is written 中禅寺, and that is the only time you will hear it in the original script. A word of honesty before we begin. The detailed building-by-building story of this particular temple is thinly recorded, so I will keep to what is firmly known about the temple itself: its school, its sacred image, its place in a pilgrimage route. Around that, I will tell you the story of the wider Nikkō mountains, and I will always make clear which is which. So settle in. This is a place where a lakeshore, a mountain landscape and many centuries of devotion meet.

2. 02

   Chūzen Temple and Its Kannon

   Let us start with what the temple is. Chūzen Temple belongs to the Tendai school of Japanese Buddhism, and its principal sacred image, the honzon, is a statue of Jūichimen Senjū Kannon Bosatsu. That is an eleven-faced, thousand-armed form of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, a figure who is imagined as hearing the cries of the world and reaching out with a thousand helping hands. The temple's full formal name tells you about its family ties: Nikkō-san Rinnōji-betsuin Chūzen-ji. The word betsuin means a branch temple, and Rinnōji is the great Nikkō temple that it is linked to. So when you stand here on the lakeshore, you are at a lakeside branch of one of the central religious institutions of Nikkō. It is a lovely thing to hold in your mind as you look at the water: compassion personified, enshrined beside a mountain lake.

3. 03

   A Stop on the Pilgrim's Road

   Chūzen Temple is not only a place to admire. It is the eighteenth stop on the Bandō Sanjūsankasho pilgrimage route. The name means the 33 places of Bandō, which is the old name for the Kantō region, and the route links temples devoted to Kannon. That matters for how you think about this site. A pilgrimage temple is a waypoint on a journey, a place where travelers have come with a purpose, often walking from one sacred site to the next. Being the eighteenth stop places Chūzen Temple roughly midway along that chain of 33, so you can picture pilgrims arriving here with a good part of their journey behind them and more still ahead. The sacred image fits the route perfectly: a Kannon temple on a Kannon pilgrimage, standing beside one of the most atmospheric lakes in the mountains above Nikkō.

4. 04

   The Sacred Mountains of Nikkō

   Now let us widen the lens, because this temple sits within one of Japan's most celebrated sacred landscapes. This part is the story of the Nikkō area, not of the temple's own walls. Nikkō has about 1,200 years of history, faith and culture. Shinto worship of the mountain god coexists here with Buddhism, which regards the mountains as the pure land of Kannon. That is the very deity at the heart of Chūzen Temple, so the temple's image and the mountain landscape speak the same language. The monk Shodo Shonin is credited with establishing Futarasan Shrine in the year 782, and it is dedicated to the three deities of the surrounding mountains. The famous shrines and temples of Nikkō, among them Tōshō-gū, Futarasan Shrine and Rinnōji, form a World Heritage Site. It is described as a striking alliance between architecture and natural setting, where mountains and forests are objects of reverence. Even as you stand by the lake, you are inside that larger tradition of sacred nature.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   If you are wondering how people reach this corner of Nikkō, the temple is about 18 kilometers by car from Tobu Nikko Station. From Tokyo, the usual route is the Tohoku bullet train to Utsunomiya Station, then a transfer to the line running up to Nikko Station. Before you go, take a moment to look at the setting. Notice how the temple, the lake and the surrounding hills share one scene, which is just what the tradition of Nikkō has always celebrated. Think of the thousand-armed Kannon, and of pilgrims who treated this place as the eighteenth step on a long road. And if your curiosity is still awake, the wider Nikkō area has plenty more stories waiting, from the monk Shodo to the grand shrines that gave the region its fame. Where will your next step lead?