Nara: Why They Built the Great Buddha

A statue of a monk stands in the fountain outside Kintetsu Nara Station. It is the most famous place in Nara to meet someone. And yet hardly anyone knows who the monk is.

His name is Gyoki, a monk who lived from 668 to 749, from the Asuka into the Nara period. He dug reservoirs and built bridges, and he is said to have founded 49 temples in his lifetime. These were the Tenpyo years. A smallpox epidemic and rebellions came one after another — upheaval great enough to strain the state. In 743, Emperor Shomu issued a decree to raise a colossal Buddha, wishing that all living things, plant and animal, might flourish. People brought a single branch of grass, a single handful of earth. It was Gyoki who gathered that strength together.

Why did an emperor raise a giant large enough to strain his own country? And what became of the Great Buddha afterwards? You will meet both answers on foot, at the places themselves. When you learn that the head of today's Buddha is actually from the Edo period, the story of building it turns, little by little, into the story of repairing it. Take your first step, and the statue you used to walk past becomes the beginning of a story.