Emperor Shōmu’s Great Buddha of Tōdai-ji

The 730s brought disaster to Japan. A smallpox epidemic in 735–737, estimated to have killed 25–35 per cent of the adult population, carried off most of the high officials, including the four Fujiwara brothers, and in 740 Fujiwara no Hirotsugu rebelled. Emperor Shōmu moved his court between several capitals, in 741 ordered state temples to be built in every province and, at his Shigaraki palace, issued the edict of 743: ‘It is We who possess the wealth of the realm; it is We who possess its power. With this wealth and power We shall make this venerable image. The work is easy to accomplish; the spirit is hard to attain.’ The chronicle dates the edict to the day xinsi of the tenth month — 6 November 743; modern conversion tables, which begin that lunar month a day earlier, give 5 November. The popular preacher Gyōki and his disciples went among the people to win support, and in 745 the emperor raised him to daisōjō, the highest rank of the Buddhist clergy.

The work begun at Shigaraki was moved in 745, when the court returned to Heijō-kyō, to the site of Tōdai-ji, the ‘Great Eastern Temple’, which served as the provincial temple of Yamato. The statue was cast in eight stages, from the base upwards, between 747 and 749. Early in 749 Mutsu province in the north-east presented the court with gold for the first time, and on 21 April Shōmu, facing the unfinished image, called himself ‘the servant of the Three Treasures’ and announced the find; that summer he abdicated in favour of his daughter, Empress Kōken. On 26 May 752 the Indian monk Bodhisena painted in the eyes of the Buddha in the presence of the court and, according to the chronicle, ten thousand invited monks, with music and dances performed by the court musicians and the temples.

The Great Buddha was badly damaged in the wars of 1180 and 1567: its present head dates from the Edo period and most of the body from Kamakura-era repairs, while only parts of the 8th-century casting survive. The statue, about 15 metres high, and Tōdai-ji are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site ‘Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara’.