316 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
In the same year as his first
embassy to China he had con-
structed the Horyuji Temple.
This spectacular temple, parts of
which still exist, was built by
Chinese and Korean architects
in the Chinese style, although
Japanese adaptations can be
seen in it already. It contrasts
greatly to the simple, grain-stor-
age style of the Grand Shrine at
Ise. The portions that survived a
fire in 670, the Golden Hall con-
taining the Buddha images, is
said to be the oldest wooden
building in the world. The main
image in Horyuji Temple is the
“Shaka Trinity,” figures of the
historical Buddha, Gautama
(known as Shaka in Japan),
flanked by two bodhisattvas. It
was cast in bronze by an artisan
of Chinese descent and dedi-
cated in 623 to Prince Shotoku,
who had died the previous year.
Like many things borrowed
directly from China in this early
period, it hasn’t the sensuous-
ness of later Japanese adapta-
tions, but a beautiful wooden
sculpture of Miroku (Maitreya,
the Buddha of the future bodhi-
sattva) in a nearby nunnery is pensive and evocative, already showing signs of
later directions of Japanese aesthetics.
The building of temples became a source of competition among the power-
ful clans and a great drain on national resources. By 640, 46 temples had been
built in Japan. In 741 the imperial government got involved; each province was
ordered to install a temple and a seven-story pagoda, with a monastery for 20
monks and a nunnery for 10 nuns. Each temple was allotted 60 acres of rice
land and 50 households to support the temple.
The many provincial temples all required copies of the sutras, which were
scarce and valuable in the beginning. The government established offices for
copying the sutras in major temples around Nara and paid scribes to do the
copying. Devout individuals would sponsor the copying of sutras in order toCrown Prince Shotoku (574–622), the seventh-cen-
tury regent, with his two sons. Woodblock Reproduc-
tion from the eighth-century painting: Hanging scroll,
Ink and Colors on Paper, Imperial Household Collec-
tion: one of the treasures from Horyu-ji.
101.3×53.5cm. (Artist unknown)