The venerable Senso-ji Buddhist temple (officially Kinryū-zan Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺)) is located in the Asakusa area of downtown Tokyo. The photo above (follow the link for more of this beautiful compound) shows Hozomon (the Treasure House Gate) that provides an entrance to the main temple; it is flanked by Senso-ji’s five story pagoda on the left.
Founded in 645 CE, Senso-ji is the oldest established temple in Tokyo. The temple is dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon (観音菩薩), called Guanyin in Chinese; this beloved Buddhist deity is associated with compassion. Senso-ji is one of Japan’s most important Buddhist temples and one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions. In fact the Wikipedia entry for Senso-ji informs us that “it is the most widely visited religious site in the world with over 30 million visitors annually.” For what it is worth, there was no shortage of visitors on the day I went.
The first gate, the street side entrance that one passes through on the way to the inner compound, is Kaminarimon (the Thunder Gate) . When I arrived at around 8:20 in the morning, tourists were beginning to trickle into the compound. Before heading inside quite a few people were waiting in line along the street for the chance to get an unobstructed photo of themselves standing dead center in front of the gate. There were a few solo travelers taking selfies, but it was mostly couples who would switch off, each taking two or three photos of their mate. A few people got a bit carried away, but the line remained orderly and people were impeccably polite. It was actually rather charming to watch. The photo below is the same scene as seen from inside the gate just before I turned my back and set off towards Hozomon.
It is worth noting that none of the buildings one sees today within the large compound date back to the temple’s founding. The temple area was leveled in a March, 1945, bombing raid towards the end of WWII. Today’s buildings are reconstructions completed for the most part in the 1950s and 1960s. Wartime destruction was not the first time parts of Senso-ji were devastated; buildings within the compound have been destroyed by fire on numerous occasions during the 1700 years of Senso-ji’s existence.
The two images above are both of Hozomon, the second of the gates between the entrance to the compound and the main temple of Senso-ji. In the first, I am facing the front of the gate as I walk towards the main temple. It is about 8:30am and the October sun is still fairly low in the sky behind my right shoulder. I took the second image from the top of the steps leading into the main temple. This side of the gate faces north; the sun is in front of me and to my left. Though it does not bring me level with the roof, my elevation shows how steep that roof is, and how it dominates the building below it.
I have lived in East and Southeast Asia for some 35 years now and have visited lots of Buddhist temples during those years, in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and now Japan. Some of these have been large, wealthy and well-known, some draw crowds of tourists, but many have been small and unknown to all but the monks and nuns that call them home and the devout Buddhists that they serve. Buddhist temples and pagodas in Japan are similar in some respects to their counterparts in China, but Japanese design is strikingly different in other ways. The roofs of the buildings, in particular, are very steep and they project out quite far from the actual building. Japanese multi-storied pagodas like the one in Senso-ji are unique, I have seen nothing like them elsewhere in my travels. I am not familiar with the terminology used to describe architectural designs and features, so it is best to let the photos speak for themselves.
I am disappointed in myself that I do not have more images of the main temple building and the area around it. One of the lessons of this and other visits to well-known destinations in Japan is that my approach as a photographer to these places needs to be better organized and more disciplined. As I look through the folder of Senso-ji images, I not only see what is there, but also a number of images that are missing.
By the time I left Senso-ji shortly after 11am, any semblance of order at the Kaminarimon gate had disappeared as crowds of visitors headed inside to see the temple compound.
