You do not see the Dai-Butsu as you enter the grounds of his
long-vanished temple, and proceed along a paved path across stretches of
lawn; great trees hide him. But very suddenly, at a turn, he comes into
full view and you start! No matter how many photographs of the colossus
you may have already seen, this first vision of the reality is an
astonishment. Then you imagine that you are already too near, though
the image is at least a hundred yards away. As for me, I retire at once
thirty or forty yards back, to get a better view. And the jinricksha man
runs after me, laughing and gesticulating, thinking that I imagine the
image alive and am afraid of it.
But, even were that shape alive, none could be afraid of it. The
gentleness, the dreamy passionlessness of those features,--the immense
repose of the whole figure--are full of beauty and charm. And, contrary
to all expectation, the nearer you approach the giant Buddha, the
greater this charm becomes. You look up into the solemnly beautiful
face--into the half-closed eyes that seem to watch you through their
eyelids of bronze as gently as those of a child; and you feel that the
image typifies all that is tender and calm in the Soul of the East. Yet
you feel also that only Japanese thought could have created it. Its
beauty, its dignity, its perfect repose, reflect the higher life of the
race that imagined it; and, though doubtless inspired by some Indian
model, as the treatment of the hair and various symbolic marks reveal,
the art is Japanese.
So mighty and beautiful the work is, that you will not for some time
notice the magnificent lotus-plants of bronze, fully fifteen feet high,
planted before the figure, on either side of the great tripod in which
incense-rods are burning.
Through an orifice in the right side of the enormous lotus-blossom on
which the Buddha is seated, you can enter into the statue. The interior
contains a little shrine of Kwannon, and a statue of the priest Yuten,
and a stone tablet bearing in Chinese characters the sacred formula,
Namu Amida Butsu.
A ladder enables the pilgrim to ascend into the interior of the colossus
as high as the shoulders, in which are two little windows commanding a
wide prospect of the grounds; while a priest, who acts as guide, states
the age of the statue to be six hundred and thirty years, and asks
for some small contribution to aid in the erection of a new temple to
shelter it from the weather.
For this Buddha once had a temple. A tidal wave following an earthquake
swept walls and roof away, but left the mighty Amida unmoved, still
meditating upon his lotus.