The Great Buddha
On Friday, June 7, 2019 I returned to Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, about one hour south of central Tokyo, once more to see the Great Buddha at the Kotoku-in Temple in the village of Hase. The Great Buddha is one of the famous sights of Japan - an eight hundred-year-old bronze statue sitting exposed to the air, covered with a green patina of bronze rust. It wasn’t always exposed to the exposed to the air. Repeated natural disasters (typhoons) destroyed one wooden temple building after another. The last enclosing temple structure was destroyed by a tsunami in 1498 and never rebuilt. Not yet, anyway.
I hadn’t been there in about twenty years, and almost on a whim, on a day when I had little else to do, I decided to go down there for the pleasure of it. I thought I was being very clever to go on a weekday. I wasn’t. The annual Rainy Season began in the Tokyo area that day and it was grey, raining, and frightfully humid. Plus, Kamakura seemed plenty crowded to me. The area around Hase Station is not designed for heavy vehicular or pedestrian traffic. Imagine Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario, Canada in high summer with absolutely NO parking anywhere and sidewalks only half as wide. Hase’s main thoroughfare is a single street, about eight meters wide. In addition, the signage is variously good and bad. If I didn’t already know approximately where the Kotoku-in Temple was there is no sign at Hase Station to tell me where to go to find it. A person could ask the station staff, or simply follow along behind the other tourists and Japanese school groups. As it was, I knew that the sea was a couple hundred meters to the left and the town uphill, to the right. The temple had to be to the right somewhere. It was, of course.
While I was there, I observed one Japanese elementary school group sheltering and eating lunch under a porch roof; one Japanese junior high school group; a few European tourists in short pants and cheap plastic raincoats; and, a sea of umbrella-carrying Chinese. Chinese everywhere!
Access from Tokyo is easy. Train travel here is always easy. Even if you don’t speak Japanese or know the country well, if you just give yourself more than enough time, go slow, look at the signs, use whatever language you are capable of, observe what other people are doing and use your head things are apt to work out okay. I read tourist access information on the Internet that was more confusing than helpful: express trains from Shinjuku; express trains from Tokyo Station; express trains from Shibuya and Shinagawa; JR Rail Passes. What load of unnecessary crap! In the end I used the trains that I was familiar with. I don’t need a guide book. I don’t need a Japan Map app. I know where Kamakura is, so I took the Shonan-Shinjuku Line from JR Shinjuku Station in central Tokyo and got off at Ofuna Station. Then I transferred to the Yokosuka Line for two stations - Kita-kamakura and finally Kamakura. Then I transferred to the local Enoden Line: three stops to Hase Station. Easy-piecey-Japanesey! It took about 100-minutes from my home. Travelers beware tourist access information: several train lines like the Shonan-Shinjuku Line, the Tokaido Line, the Rinkai Line and the Saikyo Line share tracks. I mean, they do not run on dedicated tracks. There are a confusing mix of local, express and rapid express trains departing at different times from the same platforms, bound for different locations. In fact, there is a Shonan-Shinjuku express train that goes from Shinjuku Station directly to Kamakura Station. But figuring it out was too bothersome. I liked my way better.
I was discouraged by the poor weather and the humidity-fueled discomfort. I went for one purpose only, but I felt I ought to have spent more time at the Kotoku-in Temple to appreciate it better than I ever have before. As it is, now I feel that I will have to return again to give the site my proper attention. And, I was so focused on the Great Buddha (and getting the hell out of there, back to my comfortable apartment), that I gave no thought at all to re-visiting any of the other famous temples in the area (there are many of those). For example, the famous Hase-dera temple, which is between Hase Station and the Great Buddha, on a hillside on the other side of the road. It’s easy to find. Again, signage is poor, but knowing where it is is a bonus. I’ve only been there once before, and I ought to see it again. Similarly, I ought to re-visit the famous Engaku-ji Temple on a hillside in Kita-kamakura (practically adjacent to the tracks). I saw it as my train passed by and I said to myself, “You know, I really ought to visit Engaku-ji again.” (Engakuji is famous as the birthplace of zazen, or Zen Buddhism.)