S P O T ／ SPOT-238

Hakuba Daibutsu (Hakuba Great Buddha)

白馬大仏はくばだいぶつ

Drive the winding valley road along the Himekawa River toward the Niigata–Nagano border and a pure-white Buddha suddenly materializes on the green mountainside above you, 23.5 meters tall and utterly out of place. The Hakuba Daibutsu was raised in the late 1960s by Kaneda Yoshitaka — a man who was simultaneously the head priest of his own religious corporation and the president of the Hakuba Kanko Hotel — and consecrated in 1972. Its details are extravagant: the eyes and the white mark between the brows are carved from jade (a fitting touch in Itoigawa, Japan's famed jade country) and the lips are agate. It was built to draw guests to the hotel and its hot springs, faith and tourism fused into a single colossal figure. But the hotel has since closed and been demolished, a 1995 flood pushed the national highway away from the statue, and the surrounding spa buildings shut down one by one. The visitors drained away. What remains is the strangest and quietest thing of all: a giant white Buddha, abandoned by the resort that built it, still sitting alone on the mountain and watching over an empty valley.