S P O T ／ SPOT-071

Jurakuen Daibutsu (Shōwa-era Concrete Buddha)

聚楽園大仏しゅうらくえんだいぶつ

On a small hill in Tōkai City stands a quietly remarkable Buddha: 18.79 meters tall, made of reinforced concrete, completed in 1927 to commemorate the wedding of the future Shōwa Emperor — a private gift to the public from a Nagoya businessman who paid for it out of his own pocket. At nearly nineteen meters, the Jurakuen Daibutsu was, on the day it was unveiled, taller than both the Great Buddha of Nara and the Great Buddha of Kamakura, a fact its donor seems to have enjoyed considerably. Unlike most prewar Buddhas, this one was a private rather than ecclesiastical commission, built in a then-new material (reinforced concrete) by an entrepreneur who had already constructed a resort hotel and amusement grounds on the same property. The hotel is long gone, but the Buddha remains, presiding over what is now a public park with health and welfare facilities clustered around the base of his hill. He is not promoted as a major attraction, which adds to the effect: the largest prewar concrete Buddha in Japan, sitting calmly above a community swimming pool, weathered and pale and quietly enormous.