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From the Olympics Toword Tomorrow
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Zenkoji Temple to watch over Olympic Games
In the heart of the city, the majestic Zenkoji Temple, housing the treasures and learning of this easternmost outcropping of Buddhist tradition, is presently in its 12th incarnation following 11 fires that have punctuated centuries of religious learning, theological disputes and clan wars.
Now as seven years of Olympic preparations come to a head, Zenkoji appears on the brink of another metamorphosis as global television brings Nagano into the living rooms of the western world in the process of mutual understanding known as globalization.
''Zenkoji Temple is not only the center of religious belief in Japan, but now that Nagano has the Olympics, Zenkoji is the center of economic attention,'' Kazutoyo Hatano, a temple guide in his late sixties said matter-of-factly on a recent tour.
He denied his remarks were targeted at the crass marketing that has become synonymous with the Olympic Games, nor the generous government outlays the games have engendered, nor were they aimed at the tourist dollars expected to be reaped from the games.
''It is just the way things have recently been in Nagano,'' he said.
''There have been some people who oppose the Olympics, but there are others who welcome it,'' Hatano said, while he explained in his slow, but clear English the esoteric meanings behind the six large Jizo statues outside the temple's Sanmon gate.
He attempted to explain the history of the Buddhist statue that came over from India, by way of China and Korea, in the year 552, was once lost in a river, then found and placed in the first Zenkoji Temple, then disappeared again, apparently to become the center of religious sectarianism and clan wars as Buddhism spread throughout Japan.
According to tradition, the triad statue of the Buddhist deity Amida is now buried deep in the bowels of Zenkoji's main temple, a huge and glorious wooden structure built in the Edo Period in 1707, Hatano said, but an exact replica exists in a neighboring temple of the Tendai Sect and is shown to the public once every seven years.
In a ritual characteristic of Japanese religion and perhaps of outlook on life, the Buddhist faithful, some 8 million a year, are not allowed to see the Amida, but can only approach the crypt where it is supposedly kept, through a pitch dark tunnel underneath the altar of the temple.
If the faithful can find the ''key to paradise,'' which is in the tunnel and manifests the power of the Amida Triad, then their salvation will be ensured, Hatano said of the centuries old tradition.
As a group of visitors marveled at the huge temple, Hatano faced east toward the 350-year-old Zenkoji Bell on one side of the temple and then to a prefabricated building erected for the U.S. TV network CBS, which counterbalances the bell on the west side of the temple.
CBS is making the Zenkoji Temple the main backdrop to its games broadcasts, thus beaming the aura of Japanese Buddhism to millions of viewers in the United States.
Said Hatano on the CBS building, ''Some people were not happy with this because no Japanese outside of the temple have ever been allowed to construct a building inside.''
Others are happy that Zenkoji will become more famous, he said, and made an effort to counterbalance CBS's presence with the fact that the ringing of the Zenkoji Bell signals the opening of the 18th Winter Games.
In an apparent bid to reconcile the spirit of 21st century Japanese Buddhist belief with the Olympic spirit, Hatano made a pitch for world peace and friendship.
''The Zenkoji Temple is a non-sectarian Buddhist temple. The Buddhist sects in Japan used to have disputes and used to fight wars, but today they are all peacefully coexisting,'' he said.
(Kyodo News)
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Copyright 1998 The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun