S P O T ／ SPOT-307

Chikurinji Temple (Godaisan)

竹林寺ちくりんじ

Standing on Mount Godai above Kochi City, this Shingon temple is the 31st station of the Shikoku 88-temple pilgrimage. Founded, by tradition, in 724 when the monk Gyoki built a hall here on the order of Emperor Shomu, it is a "temple of learning"—and the only one of the 88 sacred sites whose principal image is Manjushri Bodhisattva, the buddha of wisdom. That image ranks among the "Three Great Manjushri of Japan," drawing students and scholars to pray for sharp minds and exam success. Its name echoes China's Mount Wutai, a holy ground of Manjushri worship that the founding legend deliberately copies onto a Tosa hillside. The temple's signature sight is a 31.2-meter, all-cypress five-storied pagoda rebuilt in 1980 in Kamakura style, rising from the cedar grove and best seen looking up from the stone-stepped approach. The Main Hall is a national Important Cultural Property, and the garden attributed to the Zen monk Muso Soseki is a National Scenic Site. The botanist Tomitaro Makino so admired Mount Godai that he urged a botanical garden be built here—and the Makino Botanical Garden now spreads across the adjacent former temple grounds.