Development in the design of early Japanese state temples
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1980Author
Hashida, Takaaki
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Abstract
This thesis primarily aims to trace the development
of the major Japanese state temples built during the
period from the end of the sixth century to the middle of
the eighth century. After Buddhism was officially
introduced to the Japanese Court in 538 it was adopted
and developed as the national religion in order to bolster
the Imperial system, which also developed and established
itself during the period of the present study.
Early state Buddhist temples seem to have been used
as national monuments to demonstrate the prestige of the
emperor and the Imperial system, but in order to understand
their nature and function we began our investigation with
a study of the spiritual as well as the political climate
of Japan to which Buddhism was transplanted. We have
discussed the major architectural concepts of the Japanese
pre-Buddhist period, concentrating on the Ise Shrine, and
we have observed that some of the typical features suggest
what the basic preferences of the early Japanese temple
architecture were.
The first full-scale Japanese Buddhist temple was
erected in 588 and was called Asuka-dera. We discovered
that this temple had contained several pre-Buddhist Shinto
symbolism in spite of the fact that its form had closely
modelled a Korean temple. Asuka-dera was followed by
Shitenno-ji style temples, most of which were built at
the beginning of the seventh century. We have argued
that these were the first Japanese temples to demonstrate
explicitly the notion of national defence, and have
discussed what architectural devices were employed to
express this particular concept.
We then went on to provide an analysis and assessment
of the Second Horyu-ji. This was the most sophisticated
kind of temple built during the first stage of Japanese
temple development, i.e., when temples were built primarily
to serve as symbolic monuments to be looked at from a
distance. It was the building of the Kawahara-dera that
seems to have marked the beginning of the second stage of
the development. During this stage temples were built
to provide accommodation for elaborate imperial ceremonies.
Such temples as Yakushi-ji, Daian-ji and Todai-ji, all
built in Nara during the period from the end of the seventh
century to the middle of the eighth century, were designed
for this purpose.