In our Nara to Norwich online exhibition, I discussed the practise of Buddhist monks in Japan being sealed inside small boats which were cast off to sail eastwards to Mount Fudaraku (Potalaka), believed to be the home of the bodhisattva Kannon (Avalokitesvara)— Fudaraku tokai 補陀落渡海..
Eleven-headed Kannon on Mount Fudaraku Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333), Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975.268.20
During the Sainsbury Institute’s research visit to Japan in May 2025, we had the chance to visit one of the departure points, Fudarakusan Temple (補陀洛山寺), in Nachikatsuura, Wakayama Prefecture, south of Nara.
Kumano Nachi Mandala: a pilgrimage painting showing the sacred sites of the Kumano region, including the temple at the bottom right.
The image above and the replica boat below both have a vermillion-painted torii (鳥居), a gate marking the transition from the mundane to the sacred and now usually associated with Shinto. As with other sites of this time, the complex originally had both Shinto and Buddhist elements. The Shinto part was Hamanomiya-oji 浜の宮王子 (oji are subsidiary shrines of the three Kumano grand shrines). The Buddhist and Shinto elements were separated in the late 19th century, the latter renamed Kumano Sansho Omiya-yashiro Shrine.
A grove of trees surrounding the temple, Nagisa-no-Mori (渚の森 Forest on the Shore), still survives in part.
The monks set sail inside the cabin of a small boat which was nailed shut. Supplies of food, water and lamp oil enabled them to continue to recite sacred texts to Kannon until they grew too weak. The replica boat is small and many must have been capsized by the summer typhoons or turbulent waters where ocean currents meet.
Replica boat: Photographer: Pauline Coste.
A memorial stone (shown below) lists the journeys made from 868 to 1722.
The small temple is now cut off from the sea by a road, houses and the JR line, but it remains a peaceful and evocative memorial to the Buddhist monks who made this journey.
Susan Whitfield, October 2025