Byōdōin’s Amida Hall Is Dedicated

In 1053 the Amida Hall at Byōdōin was dedicated, one year after Fujiwara no Yorimichi converted his inherited Uji villa into a temple. Its central seated Amida image is securely identified as a work of the Buddhist sculptor Jōchō. The patron founded and supported the temple; the attribution identifies the maker of its principal image.

The central hall, adjoining corridors, pond and images gave visible form to Amida’s Pure Land. Smaller bodhisattva images and painted scenes accompanied the Buddha within the building. Worshippers encountered an ensemble of architecture and sacred images, rather than a single statue detached from its setting.

The building was originally the Amida Hall. The temple’s chronology dates the growing use of “Phoenix Hall” to around the major repairs of 1670. Much of the original complex had already been lost to fire. Modern conservation has included replacement of vulnerable objects with copies and restoration of the pond margins. The surviving hall and Jōchō image preserve important eleventh-century work within a site that has also been repaired and changed.