Shitennoji -
Osaka's Downtown Temple

The temple of the Four Heavenly Kings stands right in the middle of Osaka. From the very beginning, the temple has witnessed the vicissitudes of the city and together it has lived and died and has been reborn again. Although it stands in the middle of modern drabness and ugliness, it also stands among the ordinary people of Osaka and that is where it belongs.

When it was founded more than 1400 years ago, the temple was called Arahakaji. It owes its existence to a vow that prince Shotoku made in 587, when he was going to war with a rival clan that opposed Buddhism. The huge army of the opponents swarmed through the plain. Soldiers and generals of the army on the side of the prince were all struck with fear. Thereupon, the young prince, his hair still tied up on the temples as was customary with boys of fifteen, decided that only the gods could help. He cut down a tree and swiftly sculpted images of the Four Heavenly Kings, placed them in his topknot and uttered the vow: "If we win victory over our enemies, I promise to honor the Four Heavenly Kings by establishing a temple with a pagoda for them."

Freshly motivated, the troops of the Prince fiercely attacked the enemy and won the battle. So, when the civil disturbance had been quelled and peace had returned to the land, in 593 the prince started building a temple for the Four Heavenly Kings in the province of Settsu, present-day Osaka.

The Pagoda

The Cult of a Prince
Thus runs the undoubtedly half-mythical story. But excavations have shown that a temple really was built in Osaka in the period under consideration. That location in itself is another factor pointing at Prince Shotoku. The temple was not built in the political center of Asuka, but at the sea coast, close to Ikaruga where the prince later would set up his palace (the present-day Horyuji). In later years, the Prince was active in foreign affairs. The only point where some doubt remains is whether this original temple, Arahakaji, was indeed a temple dedicated to the Four Heavenly Kings. Those "kings" were seen as miraculous protectors of the state and subjugators of foreign enemies. The cult of the Four Kings was especially ardent in the middle of the seventh century, when Japan faced the threat of invasion from the continent. The same is true for the Benevolent King Sutra, the holy book on which the cult of the Four Kings was based. So it is possible that Arahakaji was renamed Shitennoji at some later point in time, when the cult of the Four Kings was made more prominent than it had been in the time of Prince Shotoku.

A cold winter wind blows through the concrete streets of Osaka. It is as if I am walking through a wind tunnel, so expertly do the high buildings direct the wind right into my face. In the large temple courtyard, sand whirls into my eyes. It is a bleak day. After the concrete city, a concrete temple. Shitennoji was destroyed in the last war and has been rebuilt with modern materials. The rebuilding, however, has been done in a very tasteful way, imitating both the exact floor plan and the curves of brackets and beams as in the real, wooden temple that was lost in the fires of the war (for once, the protection of the Four Kings seems not to have worked). The temple plan is continental, Korean: a walled courtyard with a southern gate and a central gate; a pagoda standing in front of the Main Hall and behind that a lecture hall built into the surrounding wall.

In the Main Hall, a large Guze Kannon (Prince Shotoku was in later times believed to be the incarnation of this Kannon) sits on the altar. At the four corners stand the four kings. The statues are modern, though trying to look old, but they give themselves away in the ungainliness of the limbs, the lack of softness in the faces. Paintings decorate the walls here and in the Lecture Hall, displaying scenes from the life of the Buddha and prince Shotoku. These are from the expert hand of modern artist Sugimoto Kenkichi. As happened with other great native teachers of the Buddhist creed in Japan, in the Middle Ages prince Shotoku was blown up into the proportions of a Buddha himself. Halls were erected in which an image of the Prince was enshrined, sometimes a as young boy, sometimes as regent. People offered their prayers to the prince rather than to the Buddha, feeling more comfortable with him. This happened in Shitennoji, in Horyuji, and in other temples connected with Prince Shotoku, such as Koryuji in Kyoto and Kakurinji in Hyogo.

The Lecture Hall

A Prince of the People
In the temple museum, I see objects that are associated with the Prince. The prince, a boy of two, sits on his knees, hands folded in earnest prayer. He is a bit heavy. The statue reminds one of statues of the just-born Buddha, also a young boy proclaiming his faith. Then there is a somewhat older prince, sitting in Chinese chair, holding an incense burner. The hair is tied up on the temples. I see a pictorial biography of the prince, showing a variety a scenes from his life through all of which he just sits, an immobile, hieratic figure. Many objects in the museum have been associated brought in connection with the Prince, although proof is lacking and most artefacts are clearly from a later date than the early 7th century. Two swords, both national treasures and great shining blades, are said to have been swords the prince owned and used; small pendant amulets with gilt-silver decorations, almost molding away, are said to have been worn by him. A decaying piece of cloth is said to have been part of his robe. There is also a temple history, that so impressed a thirteenth century emperor, that he copied it himself and pressed his big hands, daubed in red ink, on the resulting scroll. The prince is everywhere and in everything. The whole temple exudes the veneration the common people of Osaka felt for him, from the Middle Ages on, when the Prince was already a faraway mythical figure.

Shitennoji stood among the people, a fact also shown by another temple treasure, fan-shaped booklets containing pictures in Yamatoe style and phrases from the Lotus sutra. Many of those pictures portray not the aristocracy who donated them, but ordinary people, women and children, people who lived around the temple. The temple still stands among the residents of southern Osaka and they still fill its courtyards, not only when the great Bugaku dances are given on festival days, but also on ordinary days, when a cold wind blows through the sand. They enter the wide grounds via the torii gate on the west side. When seen from the temple, in the early evening this torii would frame the setting sun and thus seemed to bring the Western Paradise of the Buddha Amida closer to the believers. Looking out over the Bay of Osaka, they even believed seeing the Amida himself in the red rays of the decaying sun.

Today, I only see a jumble of ugly gray buildings. The sea has been buried and is faraway and the sun is hidden by the high rises and the bleak clouds. Shivering, I walk back to Tennoji Station.

The torii gate of the temple