S P O T ／ SPOT-074

Ichihatayama Yakushi-ji Reclining Buddha

一畑山薬師寺 涅槃像いちはたさんやくしじ ねはんぞう

Hidden in the mountains east of Okazaki, Ichihatayama Yakushi-ji is a modern mountaintop temple whose centerpiece is a 8.94-meter gilded reclining Buddha — a Yakushi Nyorai (Buddha of healing) lying on his side in the moment of passing into nirvana, his body covered in approximately 30,000 sheets of gold leaf. Reclining Buddhas are rare in Japan, where the iconographic preference has traditionally been seated and standing figures; this one belongs to a small modern subgenre that includes the Nanzōin reclining Buddha in Fukuoka and the white reclining Buddha at Nan-mu-daishi-zō in Wakayama. The temple itself is built in the modern 'destination temple' style — broad parking lots, a panoramic terrace, a public bath linked to the precinct — but the Buddha himself is genuinely arresting, the gold leaf catching shifts in daylight throughout the day. From the temple's hilltop grounds the entire Mikawa plain rolls out below, with Okazaki city and the distant Pacific just visible on clear days.