Eikan-do Zenrin-ji

The temple is officially called Zenrin-ji, although Kyoto has long known it as Eikan-do. Inside the temple hall, the lotus pedestal is visible; monks still make a circuit around it lasting many hours once a year. Several centuries ago, Eikan-do Zenrin-ji was already included in guidebooks to Kyoto’s sights, and donations from public displays of the temple relic went toward maintaining the monastery.

The central image of Eikan-do Zenrin-ji is a wooden figure of Amida Buddha, only seventy-seven centimeters tall. It stands in the Amida Hall. The body faces forward, while the head turns over the left shoulder. This figure is called Mikaeri Amida—“Amida Buddha looking back.”

The turn of the head is connected with the story of Yokan, the abbot of Eikan-do Zenrin-ji, who wanted to open the path to Buddhist salvation to ordinary people. He received a serious monastic education, spent ten years in solitary study, and then returned here to lead the temple. Yokan believed that nembutsu—the repetition of Amida Buddha’s name—was enough for rebirth in the Pure Land. This practice required neither learning nor long mastery of complex meditation. According to temple records, Yokan himself repeated Amida Buddha’s name up to sixty thousand times a day while circling the statue.

Then the temple legend begins. At dawn on February fifteenth, ten eighty-two, Yokan was making his usual circuit. He saw Amida Buddha step down from the lotus pedestal and walk ahead. The abbot stopped in surprise. Then Amida Buddha turned his head over his left shoulder and said, “Yokan, you are lagging behind.” Yokan asked that this turn be preserved so that future generations could see it.

The miracle itself remains a legend. Specialists date the present sculpture to the end of the Heian period or the beginning of the Kamakura period, around the twelfth century; the carver’s name is unknown. Yet the master’s unusual work is entirely tangible: he turned the neck and torso so that the standing figure is caught in mid-step.

Several centuries later, Edo period guidebook compilers included the looking-back Amida Buddha in books about Kyoto’s sights. The sculpture became so famous that it was taken to Osaka and Edo—present-day Tokyo—for public display. Donations collected at these exhibitions went toward maintaining the monastery.

The official name of the temple remains Zenrin-ji. The name Eikan-do, “Hall of Eikan,” became attached to it in memory of Yokan: the two characters of his name are read differently in the temple’s name. Every year from February fourteenth to fifteenth, monks again make a circuit of Mikaeri Amida lasting many hours. They repeat the very action at which Yokan stopped, while the figure’s face remains turned toward those walking behind.