Imperial Buddhist Convents, Japan

The Chuguji Imperial Buddhist Convent restoration project in Nara, Japan, is the largest and most complicated of the Japanese convent projects that WMF has undertaken. Launched in September 2007, it is expected to be completed by October 2008.

The work focuses on the restoration of the Omote Goten, or Imperial Suite, a building that contains six rooms for the imperial abbess. Virtually unaltered for 400 years, the rooms are highly decorated with wood and paper shoji panels depicting birds and flowers. Although the structure was built between the late-16th and early-17th centuries, the site itself dates back some 1,300 years.

The Omote Goten is being disassembled, repaired, and reassembled using traditional Japanese building crafts, including tatami mat craftsmanship and traditional temple construction techniques. The restoration plan for the structure includes recommendations for earthquake-proofing the site, which was damaged by the Kobe earthquake in 1995. As part of this program, the ceramic tile roof is being replaced with a copper one of similar design in order to lessen the roof’s strain on the structure and increase the building’s chances of survival should another earthquake hit.

This is the fourth Japanese Buddhist convent restoration project that WMF has carried out. In 2002, we teamed up with the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia University to work on several of the 13 surviving convents.

Our pilot project, completed in 2003, was on the Imperial Chapel (Chokusaku-do) at the Hokyoji Imperial Convent in Kyoto. Following that project, we restored a residential suite in the Reikanji Convent in Kyoto, which was rapidly deteriorating due to water damage. We then moved to the Hokkeji Convent in Nara, working on updating the fire protection system to safeguard the structure.

Exhibition
A major exhibition on the Japanese Imperial Buddhist Convents will be on view at the University Art Museum at the Tokyo University of the Arts from April to June 2009.


The New York Times: 
In Japan, Nuns' Story