Gumyoji -
Yokohama's
Neighborhood Kannon

If it were not for the station that sits right next to it, Gumyoji would be so well hidden among the shops and residences of its Yokohama downtown neighborhood, that you might never suspect its existence. The temple precincts are tiny and a little bit messy (the gate almost hidden behind ugly handwritten billboards advertising various temple events), and the entrance is full of billowing clouds of incense and praying elderly women. But isn't that exactly how it should be for a neighborhood temple, housing Kannon, the Goddess of Compassion, who relieves even our trivial, daily cares.

I come for the Kannon. A week ago I have traveled to Iwate prefecture in northern Japan to see the Kannon statue in Tendaiji, close to Ninohe, a statue famous for the rough style of carving, called natabori. It was only after my return to Tokyo that I discovered that one of the most famous statues of this type was sitting, so to speak, on my doorstep: Gumyoji was less than an hour travel from my Tokyo apartment, quite a difference from the Tendaiji Kannon that took me more than seven hours to reach.

I walk to the temple through a pleasantly old-fashioned shopping street. The Kannon Hall stands on top of a stone staircase that begins behind the red gate with its visibly disintegrating guardian gods. The temple's founding date is unclear; Gumyoji itself opts for 737 (by the priest Gyogi, to whom many temples ascribe their foundation), but experts assign the later date of 1044.

A rough-cut image
This date fits the Kannon statue, which also hails from the first half of the eleventh century. The image can be seen at a distance from the entrance of the hall, but after buying tickets from a morose young priest sitting at a desk next to the entrance, I am allowed to go further inside, on the condition that I leave my bag and shoes behind. The broad lines left by the chisel are indeed the most significant characteristic of the 180 centimeters tall, upright standing statue.

Where in the case of Tendaiji's Kannon statue, the face and hands had been smoothened, and the chisel marks themselves were relatively fine, Gumyoji's Kannon is completely covered with broad and deep cuts, laid on in a horizontal pattern. The face seems tattooed. Only in the dress, where the long folds have been expertly indicated, the hatchet work is relatively subtle.

Formerly it was thought that rough cut statues like Gumyoji's Kannon were in fact unfinished, but nowadays that hypothesis has been refuted. A single look at the deliberateness of the carving of Gumyoji's Kannon suffices to show that there is nothing unfinished about this work of art.

The Kannon carries a lotus flower on a long stem in the right hand. The face is very human, and feminine. The mouth, around which a slight smile hovers, impresses me as kind, but a little pert. It is the sort of person you could bump into any moment in the shopping street in front of the temple. Isn't she standing there, in front of the open-fronted shop selling green tea, handing out free cups for passersby to taste?

Gumyoji's shopping street

A neighborhood shrine and its shotengai
That, too, is just how it should be for a neighborhood temple. True, this Kannon is "local" in style - different from the finesse of the official statues in the state-sponsored temples of Nara and Kyoto. Soon after Buddhism was introduced to Japan's court and aristocrats, Kannon became a popular deity among the common people. Shut out of the state and clan temples, the common folk established their own houses of worship, in a style all their own.

In this way, for almost a thousand years, Gumyoji has functioned as a neighborhood shrine, and that is how it became so securely founded in its community. The Goddess has always been nearby to comfort those in distress. That is why no discord, no clash exists between the temple and the nearby pachinko hall, the greengrocer and the sake dealer, the stall hawking fried octopus and the bicycle repair-shop.

After descending the staircase leading down from the temple, I walk through the arcaded shopping street, the shotengai. On this afternoon close to the end of the year, it is busy and lively. I buy some Japanese sweets, a package of green tea, a plastic bag filled with oranges. In the crockery shop I search for an earthenware cooking pot. Prices are more reasonable than in my Tokyo neighborhood.

And although the Kannon is invisible now on her dais at the back of the small temple hall on the hill, I meet her time and again in the friendly faces of the people of this Yokohama neighborhood.

The temple gate at the end of the shopping street