Horyu-ji: The World's Oldest Wooden Buildings in Nara (607)

Horyu-ji is a Buddhist temple in Ikaruga, near Nara in Japan, founded according to tradition in 607 by Prince Shotoku and Empress Suiko. Rebuilt after a fire in 670, its Golden Hall and five-storey pagoda are the oldest surviving wooden buildings in the world. With its sculptures, paintings and ritual objects, Horyu-ji preserves an unrivalled picture of the art and architecture of East Asia in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Background: Buddhism in Asuka Japan

Buddhism reached Japan from the Korean kingdom of Baekje in the 6th century. After the pro-Buddhist Soga clan defeated their rivals in 587, the court began building large temples, starting with Asuka-dera (Hoko-ji), completed in the 590s with the help of craftsmen from Baekje.

Prince Shotoku, regent for his aunt Empress Suiko, was the most famous royal patron of the new religion. He is credited with the Seventeen-Article Constitution, which urged officials to revere the Buddha, his teaching and the monastic community. Around 601 he built a palace at Ikaruga, and Horyu-ji was founded beside it.

Founding and the fire of 670

An inscription on the halo of a bronze Yakushi (Medicine Buddha) statue in the temple states that Empress Suiko and Prince Shotoku completed the temple and image in 607 to fulfil a vow of Shotoku’s father, Emperor Yomei. Many scholars believe the inscription itself was written later, but 607 has become the accepted founding date.

The Nihon Shoki records that in 670 a fire destroyed the temple completely. For a long time historians argued about whether this was true, since the surviving buildings looked very early. The question was largely settled in 1939, when excavations south-east of the present buildings uncovered the foundations of an earlier temple, now called the Wakakusa-garan, whose axis was laid out on a different angle. This was the original Horyu-ji.

The temple was then rebuilt on a new site. The Golden Hall (Kondo) is usually dated to the late 7th century, and the five-storey pagoda was completed by about 711, the date of the clay sculptures inside its base. A surprise came in 2001, when tree-ring dating showed that the pagoda’s central pillar came from a tree felled in 594, possibly timber kept in storage or reused from an earlier building.

The buildings

The Western Precinct (Sai-in) is the heart of the temple. Inside a roofed corridor stand the Golden Hall and the pagoda side by side, an asymmetrical arrangement unusual in East Asian temple design. The pagoda rises about 32 m in five storeys and has a central wooden pillar running through its core. The Golden Hall, a two-storey building with a heavy curved roof, houses the temple’s most important images.

The Eastern Precinct (To-in) was built in the 730s on the site of Shotoku’s former palace, which had been destroyed in 643 when Soga no Iruka attacked the prince’s son, Prince Yamashiro, whose family then took their own lives. Its centre is the octagonal Yumedono (Hall of Dreams), dating from 739, which holds the Guze Kannon, a gilded wooden statue believed to reflect the prince’s likeness.

The wooden structures have survived thanks to high-quality Japanese cypress (hinoki) and repeated careful repairs. The great Showa-era restoration, from 1934 to 1985, dismantled and reassembled many buildings using traditional techniques.

Treasures

Horyu-ji is also a museum of early Buddhist art. Its best-known works include:

• The Shaka Triad (623): a bronze group of the historical Buddha with two attendants, made by the sculptor Tori Busshi after Shotoku’s death, according to its inscription.
• The Kudara Kannon: a tall, slender wooden figure of the bodhisattva of compassion, whose name links it with Baekje (Kudara in Japanese).
• The Tamamushi Shrine: a miniature shrine decorated with paintings and once with iridescent beetle wings, from which it takes its name.
• The Guze Kannon: a secret statue that was kept wrapped in cloth for centuries until it was revealed in 1884 to the American scholar Ernest Fenollosa and Okakura Kakuzo.

Architecture and style

The buildings of the Western Precinct show the style of the Asuka and early Hakuho periods, which developed from Chinese architecture of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, transmitted largely through Korea. Characteristic features include cloud-shaped bracket arms supporting the deep eaves, railings with a distinctive geometric pattern, and columns that swell slightly in the lower middle before tapering towards the top.

The pagoda was built as a reliquary rather than a hall for worshippers to enter, and its storeys diminish in size towards the top, giving it a stable, elegant outline. Its flexible timber frame, with the central pillar standing inside the structure, is often cited as one reason why Japanese wooden pagodas have survived earthquakes so well, although engineers continue to study exactly how this works.

Myths and facts

The slightly swelling columns of Horyu-ji are often compared with the entasis of ancient Greek temples such as the Parthenon, and a popular theory of the late 19th and early 20th centuries claimed that the idea travelled all the way from Greece along the Silk Road. Most historians now regard this as unproven: similar column profiles appear in Chinese architecture, which is a more likely source.

It is also sometimes said that Horyu-ji has survived unchanged since Prince Shotoku’s lifetime. In fact the original temple burned in 670, the present buildings are later reconstructions, and many parts have been repaired or replaced over the centuries. What makes them remarkable is that their structure and much of their timber still date from around 700.

Key people

• Prince Shotoku (traditionally 574–622): founder of the temple and royal patron of Buddhism.
• Empress Suiko (r. 593–628): reigning sovereign at the time of its founding.
• Tori Busshi: sculptor of the Shaka Triad, of immigrant descent.
• Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908): American scholar who helped bring the temple’s art to international attention.

The fire of 1949 and modern protection

On 26 January 1949, during restoration work, a fire broke out in the Golden Hall and badly damaged its famous 7th-century wall paintings of Buddhist paradises, among the finest of their time in Asia. The building’s structure survived because its upper parts had been dismantled for repair.

The disaster shocked Japan and led directly to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties of 1950. The date 26 January is still observed as Cultural Properties Fire Prevention Day. In 1993 UNESCO inscribed the Buddhist Monuments in the Horyu-ji Area, including Horyu-ji and Hokki-ji, as one of Japan’s first World Heritage Sites.

Timeline

• c. 601: Prince Shotoku builds his palace at Ikaruga.
• 607: Horyu-ji is founded, according to tradition.
• 623: The Shaka Triad is completed after Shotoku’s death.
• 670: Fire destroys the original temple, according to the Nihon Shoki.
• Late 7th century: The Golden Hall is rebuilt on a new site.
• c. 711: The five-storey pagoda and its sculptures are completed.
• 739: The Yumedono is built in the Eastern Precinct.
• 1939: Excavations reveal the Wakakusa-garan, the original temple.
• 1949: Fire damages the Golden Hall’s wall paintings.
• 1993: Horyu-ji becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Horyu-ji preserves the oldest wooden architecture in the world and a rare collection of 7th-century Buddhist art. It shows how ideas, styles and skills from China and Korea took root in Japan, and later shaped temples such as Todai-ji in the new capital at Nara.