Ep. 091: Uji's Mimuroto-ji and Byodo-in

A modest temple and a national icon

Sometimes a pretty little temple leaves the visitor with pretty little to say. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, let's pay a quick visit to Mimuroto-ji in Uji--and one of its much more famous neighbors--in this episode of--

TEMPLE TALES!

Today's trip takes us to the tea-growing city of Uji, located in Kyoto Prefecture between the two ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto proper. It is the setting for the final chapters of Lady Murasaki Shikibu's 11th-century The Tale of Genji, and thus attracts gaggles of literature buffs. Indeed, the final chapters of what is held by some to be the world's first novel are referred to as the "Uji Chapters."

Uji is also the location of Mampuku-ji, which we visited in Episode 055; and of the uber-famous Phoenix Hall of Byodo-in, which we'll look into in a moment.

I visited Mimuroto-ji in November, at the end of the "Red Leaves" season.

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The Legend

The name Mimuroto-ji means something like "The Three-Room Temple." In the first year of his reign, Emperor Konin (reigned 770-781) noticed a mysterious golden light (there it is again!) shining in his palace in Nara, and sent a court noble to investigate. Sixteen miles away, in a tributary of the Uji River, in the basin of a waterfall, the noble found a twice-life-sized statue of Kannon (Avalokiteshvara). He dove in to get it, but the closer he got, the smaller it got--making it easier to bring up, one supposes. The emperor built Mimuroto-ji Temple to enshrine the statue.