Terror in a Temple Town

In October, 1991, I was invited to the Niiagata College of Art to give an address. The subject was a recent history of American Art, something that could translate pretty well and would not strain me or my audience. Their goal was to have me, as an American Art School President, appear at their convocation, and I did.

A part of my visit, a short, three day excursion, with 3 1/2 days of traveling, was to tour the area and get an overview of Niigata.

While out visiting, I was taken to what may be the oldest temple in Japan. It is, I believe after much research, Kannonji Temple or Saishōji temple, both in Niigata prefecture.

We wandered the grounds, buying souvenirs, when a priest came out and shouted through his bullhorn that the show was about to start (I was told) and we had only a few minutes to get there. My host asked if I wanted to go, but we didn’t really have the time to make it up the mountain and get to the Temple. However, the priest was insistent and said he’s waiting for us. We paid for tickets and hurried.

We reached the summit and went inside. The priest had already started and with the assembled group, a bus tour of older, small, Japanese seniors. They all sat on the floor. I wandered in, the size of Godzilla, and was taken to the front by the priest. He proceeded to fill me in on all I had missed. Since my native language was not Japanese, and since I was a visitor, he grabbed my arm and shouted the beginning of the story to me (I think).

Then he let me sit in the floor (not easily) and continued the story. As I understood it, sometime in the 12th century (maybe) a priest was forced to defend this temple from somebody’s army, and did so, and was killed by their shoving a spear through him. As I understood it, this was an important story and there was some lesson to be learned.

When it all was over, he stepped back behind this giant aquarium, no water involved, but it had a venetian blind cover to the side. He went behind it, shouted some prayers, tooted a flute for a bit, and then he proceeded to slowly bring up the blind, revealing the mummified priest, still impaled on the spear, inside this glass container.

We all went up to it and lit incense and then we left.

Driving away we decided to go to the town to see what there was to see. This is a photo of me in the town. We went to lunch at a local restaurant, and filling the seats were mostly the people visiting the temple, the bus tour.

We ordered lunch and had a nice conversation in a very lively restaurant. The people were very animated about their conversations, which was unusual.

On the way back to Niigata I asked my host why the people were so seemingly excited, and he said, with some embarrasement, it was because they were talking about me. It was unusual for a Westerner to be visiting this area, and I was bigger than the average visitor.

I had brought Terror to the Temple Town!
.