S P O T ／ SPOT-239

Takaoka Daibutsu (Great Buddha of Takaoka)

高岡大仏たかおかだいぶつ

Most of Japan's giant Buddhas sit in temple precincts or on mountainsides; the Takaoka Daibutsu sits, almost casually, in the middle of a working city block. This bronze seated Amida — 7.43 meters in the figure alone, nearly 16 meters with its pedestal and halo — claims a place among the "Three Great Buddhas of Japan" beside Nara and Kamakura, though the identity of that third slot has been argued over for centuries. What earns Takaoka its claim is craft. Takaoka has been Japan's foremost copperware town since the Kaga domain nurtured its foundries, and when the city's wooden Great Buddha burned in the catastrophic fire of 1900 — the latest in a long chain of destructions stretching back to a wooden original of 1221 — the townspeople answered with metal. It took 26 years, from 1907 to 1933, to cast the serene figure that stands today, the third Buddha in the lineage. Climb into the corridor inside its pedestal and you find painted scenes of hell and, in a central chamber, the singed head of the previous wooden Buddha, preserved from the flames. The poet Akiko Yosano is said to have judged its face "even more handsome than the Kamakura Buddha."