S P O T ／ SPOT-229

Shōwa Daibutsu (Seiryū-ji Temple)

昭和大仏（青龍寺）しょうわだいぶつ（せいりゅうじ）

On a wooded hillside on the outskirts of Aomori City sits a colossal bronze Buddha that almost nobody outside the region has heard of — and yet it is, by the numbers, the largest bronze seated Buddha in all of Japan. The Shōwa Daibutsu, completed in 1984 at the Kōyasan Shingon temple of Seiryū-ji, depicts Dainichi Nyorai, the cosmic Buddha at the center of esoteric Buddhism. The figure alone rises 21.35 meters; with its pedestal it reaches some 27 meters, towering well above the famous Great Buddhas of Kamakura and Nara. What makes it quietly strange is the mismatch between scale and fame: this is a record-breaking statue, cast in traditional bronze and already weathered to a deep verdigris green, standing against a backdrop of northern forest with almost no crowds. Beside it rises a 39-meter five-story pagoda built entirely of Aomori hinoki cypress, tall enough to be seen from passing trains. It is less a tourist spectacle than a piece of postwar Japan's appetite for monumental faith, expressed in metal and left to oxidize in the cold northern air.