S P O T ／ SPOT-092

Churen-ji (Mummified Saint Tetsumonkai-Shōnin)

湯殿山 注連寺 即身仏鉄門海上人ゆどのさん ちゅうれんじ そくしんぶつてつもんかいしょうにん

A short walk from Dainichibō, in the same snow-bound valley below sacred Mount Yudono, the temple of Churen-ji holds another sokushinbutsu — a 'living Buddha' — named Tetsumonkai-Shōnin, who entered self-mummification in 1829. His story is unusual even in this unusual tradition: as a young man he is said to have killed two samurai officials in a dispute, and in atonement first cut out one of his own eyes and offered it as a votive sacrifice, then spent the rest of his life in extreme ascetic practice — bark-and-needle diet, thousand-day meditations, ritual sealings — before finally being buried alive in a stone chamber and emerging three years later as a sokushinbutsu. Churen-ji is also famous in modern Japanese literature as the setting of Mori Atsushi's novel Gassan (which won the Akutagawa Prize in 1974), and reading the novel before visiting deepens the experience of approaching this small wooden temple buried under several meters of winter snow. The temple is currently a working center of Shingon Buddhism; treat Tetsumonkai-Shōnin as a present-day teacher, not a museum exhibit.