Kozoji -
A Hole in the Heart

In a shaded valley at the foot of the snowy Zao mountains, stands an old wooden Amida Hall. The merciful Buddha of the Western Paradise, who welcomes even sinners as long as they sincerely call on his name, is present in the form of two statues, one of which has a hole in the breast at the place of the heart. As if he has given his heart away...

I am lucky with the taxi driver who brings me from the big, windy Shinkansen station of Shiroishi-Zao to Kozoji in the pleasant hills of Kakuda. He is talkative, but in a friendly way, without being obtrusive. It is true that the wind blowing down from the Zao Mountains is cold, but there is not much snow here, in contrast to his native prefecture of Niigata, he says. He knows the temple I am planning to visit, as he sometimes goes there on Sundays when he takes his wife for a drive on his motorbike. "There is also an old farmhouse," he adds, "we often sit on the verandah and eat rice balls, enjoying the view of the park."

It is fifteen minutes to the temple, and when we arrive, the driver offers to stop the meter and accompany me. "With only one train an hour, there is anyway nothing to do but wait in front of that windy station," he explains. Here at Kozoji it is bright and warm, the round hills shelter us from Zao's cold blasts. A few old stone steps lead up to an ancient hall, standing in a dense patch of forest. Its roof is thickly covered with thatch. I peep into the temple, but it is too dark to make out anything clearly. The doors are locked.

I have called in advance and was told that there would always be someone available to show me the statues inside the hall. Helpful, the taxi driver runs to the priest's house and only moments later comes back, waving a huge key. He manages to open the old locks, and soon the priest's wife, too, appears. She had been on an errand but has returned to give me an explanation about the temple. It is a soft-spoken and amiable woman, who hastens to open the shutters, so that natural light reveals the two Buddha's sitting in this small temple.

Savior
The main image, in the hall's center, is a large Amida. The 2.73 meter high statue is made of black-lacquered wood. The gold-finish has worn off, but for the rest it has been well preserved. The priest's wife points out the hands to me: the sculptor has added webs, like of a duck's feet, between the fingers. "This is to show that the Amida Buddha will save every single human being, and that nobody can slip between his fingers," she explains.

Kozoji was founded in 918 by Toku-ichi, a priest who was also active in the Aizu area of Fukushima. The Amida Hall (all that rests of the temple today) was added in 1177 at the behest of the wife of Hidehira, the third lord of the northern Fujiwara clan. The cult of Amida, the Buddha of the Western Paradise, dates from roughly the same period. The world was believed to have entered the Latter Days of the Law, and in those dark and chaotic times personal effort was not sufficient anymore to reach Enlightenment. One needed the mercy of Amida, who had vowed to save all beings who would call his name, and let them be reborn in his paradise. The most famous representation of Amida was made by the sculptor Jocho and graces the Byodoin of Uji dating from 1053.

Twice Savior
At the back of the main statue, in a corner of the hall, sits another large Amida statue, but this one looks very different. Through the dusk I look at the remnants of a moldering wooden frame. The face is still largely unscathed, but the body has been damaged so much that there is even a large hole at the place where the heart would be. The priest's wife laughs when she notices my surprise. "Mice! They have eaten a hole in his heart." Why the heart? Parishioners used to place offerings of rice on the hands of the Amida, that were upturned in front of his breast. At night, the temple mice would come out for their meal, and in their furious eating, they have gnawed through the wood of the Buddha's breast.

The Amida looks pathetic. It is as if he has voluntarily given his heart away, to save us humans. When you forget about the mice, this becomes is a fitting symbol of the Buddha's compassion. At the same time, the sad state of this statue serves to attract my compassion, too. I end up liking this battered statue better then the still perfectly healthy one that occupies center stage in the hall.

The old farmhouse

The evolving world
I am also invited for a short inspection of the old farmhouse, The 'Sato Family Residence,' which has been moved here from elsewhere in the region. It is filled to the brim with antique-looking farm instruments. The taxi driver, who has followed me, jumps at the opportunity to shows off his farming skills. "I am a farmer's son," he explains, "when I was young, we still used this hoe, or that winning machine." That must have been in the nineteen-fifties, when I was born: not so terribly long ago. Now all farm utensils are electric. In half a lifetime, the world has come a long way.

"Our house was also like this!" The driver smiles happily at the thatched ceiling, the bare wooden floors, and the clay furnace. There is almost no furniture. In the middle of the raised portion of the house, where the family lived, is an irori, or fireplace. A black kettle hangs on a chain from the ceiling. The only comfort are removable straw mats, even tatami were an unaffordable luxury for ordinary farmers. It must have a harsh and simple life. In those days, people must have had a body of iron.

The priest's wife explains how difficult it is to keep the thatched roofs intact, of this farmhouse and of the temple proper. "Especially at this damp place, under the trees, weeds thrive on the roofs, so that the thatch must be renewed every few years." The time will come that artisans to do this job will be unavailable, and then the roof will carry holes like those in the breast of the Buddha Amida.

The priest's wife closes up the farmhouse and the temple, and I take leave from her and the two Amida's. On the way back to Tokyo, I often think about the broken statue with the hole in the breast, as if he had given his heart away.