Project

Conservation of the Japanese Imperial Buddhist Convents was the inaugural project for World Monuments Fund in Japan. In 2002, WMF and the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia University joined forces to carry out a restoration project at the Imperial Chapel Chokusaku-do at Hokyoji Imperial Convent in Kyoto. (...)

Conservation of the Japanese Imperial Buddhist Convents was the inaugural project for World Monuments Fund in Japan. In 2002, WMF and the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia University joined forces to carry out a restoration project at the Imperial Chapel Chokusaku-do at Hokyoji Imperial Convent in Kyoto. This richly decorated 18th-century room served as the Emperor’s private chapel in the Imperial Palace in Kyoto before being moved to Hokyoji in 1846 when it was bequeathed by the emperor to his sister, the abbess at Hokyoji. WMF and IMJS continued their collaboration and expanded the project to address conservation threats at three other convents: Chuguji in Nara, which suffered destabilizing structural damage in the wake of the 1995 Kobe earthquake; Reikanji in Kyoto where the delicately painted silk wall panels of the only surviving residential quarters in any of the convents were becoming water-damaged and rapidly disintegrating; and Hokkeji in Nara, where fire protection and under-garden water delivery systems no longer functioned, threatening the entire complex. Work at Hokkeji was completed in 2006, at Reikanji in 2007, and at Chuguji in 2008.