Amidado -
Paradise in the Coal Hills

In the desolate coal country of Iwaki, just inside Fukushima Prefecture, sits a delicate Amida Hall. The small wooden building, set in the remnants of a Paradise garden, looks sober but elegant. Time, however, has concealed the primary Technicolor in which it was originally daubed.

The train from Tokyo to Iwaki passes Mito, castle town of the Matsudaira's that is now characterized by its excellent museums. After Mito, Hitachi country begins. The town of Hitachi is the origin of the electronics giant of the same name and its surroundings are occupied by extensive factories. Hitachi was originally a copper mining town, and further north, coal was mined. The landscape still shows the scars. It is dark, dusty and does not look very flourishing. Only the coast, that comes into view after Hitachi, is beautiful, with rocky beaches and quaint small islets.

Iwaki, too, was a coal mining area. The Joban Coal Field was opened in 1883 and closed in 1976. The town shows the chaotic results of the usual lack of planning. Everything is there, from supermarkets and department stores to hospitals, but the presentation is utterly unattractive. In that respect, it resembles former coal mining towns elsewhere.

A Corner of Paradise
The bus ride out of town is dreary, but things get better after alighting from the bus at a bridge with red railings called Amida Bridge. Looking straight ahead towards the brown-green hill, I see my destination: a small, plain wooden temple. The temple and its grounds were restored in the middle of the nineteen-sixties. After passing a second vermilion bridge, the ordinary world falls away. The temple stands on an island in the middle of a placid pond. To the back and sides the hills form an encircling embrace. It is a small corner of paradise in this devastated country

The hall was built in 1160 by Toku-hime, the daughter of Kiyohira, the famous founder of the Northern Fujiwara capital of Hiraizumi with its Golden Hall. Toku-hime had been married to Norimichi, who ruled Iwaki on the southern edge of the huge domain that was controlled by her father. She established a temple, Ganjoji, on the present spot and when her husband died, she added the Amida Hall as a place to pray for his soul and herself took the vows as a nun.

Ganjoji is gone now and only the Amida Hall, the building where I stand, remains. It is three bays wide, has a shingled roof, and an intricately coffered ceiling. The altar is surrounded by four sturdy pillars. Monks would walk around the altar, intoning prayers. The principal statue is Amida, made from joined wood-blocks and finished with lacquer; he is flanked by Kannon and Seishi Bosatsu and two guardian kings. Encapsulated by the plain brown walls and the complex woodwork of the ceiling, the small statues exude quietude...

The Amida Hall

From Technicolor to Monochrome
A priest in gray dress, lean and intelligent, sitting in a corner of the hall gives an explanation of the building and its treasures. Originally the Amida was covered with gold leaf, he tells, the guardian kings were painted in bright colors. More than that, the whole ceiling was covered with flowers in red, blue and white colors. The beams were gaily painted, the pillars were decorated with Buddhist figures and the walls were graced by large decorations of Buddhist scenes. The simple hall once was an orgy of colors and glitter, an image of paradise...

I am glad time has eroded the colors, much preferring the color of unvarnished wood, the solace of an unpainted Buddha statue. We already live in a plastic world of glitter, and of the bright colors of TV, advertisements, and shop windows. Everything around us is overly decorated and blown-up. We are being shouted at all day long. Therefore it is a good thing to get away from the attack of those bright colors. Paradise, peace, can be found in this plain wooden hall, with its unadorned statues smiling in the dusk.

But for people in the twelfth century it must have been the other way round. They lived in dark houses, wore drab clothes, had little to divert the eyes from the daily monotony. For them, the explosion of colors inside the hall was a vision of riches and paradise. It lifted them out of their daily surroundings, and brought a new spiritual awareness, just as the faded, plain, dusky hall now lifts us, modern beings, up.

The world has changed 180 degrees, but the Amida Hall still fulfills it celestial function, providing solace and consolation for those who are tired of the dreariness that surrounds them in their daily lives.