The Horyuji: World’s Oldest Surviving Wooden Architecture
“Wow, is that really what ancient people could do? How could this have been possible?”
This is our typical reaction when we see pieces of great architecture our ancestors have left us. We somehow automatically assume that modern people are more capable than people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago.
But is that really true? Were ancient people less advanced, less knowledgeable and capable? We can take a look at Horyuji, world’s oldest wooden structure. 西岡常一 (Tsunekazu Nishioka), the late great (and last) 宮大工 ( miyadaiku) chief who was involved in Horyuji’s great restoration in the 20th century offers profound insights what went into the construction of Horyuji.
What is Horyuji?
Before getting into details, you would need to know a little bit about Horyuji. It is one of the first Buddhist temples in Japan built after Buddhism was imported to Japan from China via Korea in the 6th century. For a country that was still developing to have a civilization, the sophistication associated with Buddhism, especially the statues of Buddha with beautiful carvings and paintings (they were often covered with gold) and scripture, was a big shock and a wakeup call.
Although ruling class back then fought on whether or not to accept a foreign religion, eventually 聖徳太子 (Shotoku Taishi, 574-622), a big Buddhism promoter, emerged as a leader and built Horyuji in 607. As Buddhism was a symbol of an accelerated civilization, you can almost feel the passion and ambition people put into Horyuji – it had to be a special endeavor that represented a new era.
Indeed, Shotoku Taishi and Horyuji paved a way for Japan to accept Buddhism as a national religion and pursue advanced social systems. By the way, Shotoku Taishi is a mysterious, almost a super human-like figure who still inspires peoples’ imagination. He was believed to have been an incredibly smart person (a popular anecdote tells that he could hear ten people talking at the same time). He adopted advanced Chinese political system, wrote Japan’s first constitutions and created an administration system that never existed before. Shotoku Taishi and Horyuji represent unfathomable miracles that happened in ancient Japan.
Architecturally, not only is Horyuji surviving for more than 1,300 years, many modern architects including Kenzo Tange see the origin of Japanese architecture style in it.
Golden Hall and Five-storied Pagoda of Hōryū-ji
Oct 2006 by 663highland
Tsunekazu Nishioka, the late great chief of miyadaiku
Let me also introduce Tsunekazu Nishioka here, the late great chief miyadaiku who played a crucial role for the restoration of Horyuji from 1934 to 1954, which was carried out to extended the lives of the original structure through minimum repair and replacement. Horyuji is not standing here on its own: it’s gone through many restorations and repairs during its 1,300 years of life. Each repair was a result of enormous efforts put into by the top-notch miyadaiku of the time, and Nishioka saw their knowledge, skills and passions via the process of dismantling, repairing and re-assembling the pieces of timber that have been supporting Horyuji for thousands of years.
Borin into a family of miyadaiku for Horyuji (his familiy traditionally lived right next to Horyuji with people who also provided skilled services to the temple), Nishioka started his training since he was four to become the last miyadaiku master in Japan. Through his long, tireless career that saw many hardships, he acculumated unparalled knowledge and skills that made Japanese wood architecture one of the most resilient on this planet. Today, no one chooses to lead a life as a traditional miyadaiku who had to dedicate almost all his entire life to work for increasingly dwindling compensations.
It’s important to pass on his legacy. The videos below are in Japanese, but you can see his work and what was put into the restoration of Horyuji.
If you are interested, check on his book: 法隆寺を支えた木 (The Building of Horyu-ji), available via Kindle.
What kind of wood did they use for Horyuji?
As discussed above, 法隆寺 (Horyuji) was built in 607 AD and is world’s oldest surviving wooden structure. It was constructed using 檜 (hinoki, Japanese cypress) that were roughly 2,000 years old. As the temple is 1,300 years old, it’s also been 1,300 years since the timber was cut down, but it still stands firm. “And they will be fine for the next 700 years,” said Nishioka. Miya-daiku is a specially trained carpenter who builds/maintains ancient-style temples and shrines which requires substantial knowledge and skills. Such knowledge was passed down from father to son, through many years of relentless on-the-job training. According to Nishioka, “2000 year-old Japanese cypress is so robust yet resilient that it can maintain its great quality for another 2000 years, even after it’s cut down,” and that “people who initially build Horyuji in the 7th century knew about it. They knew that the building would last for another thousands of years, so they built it accordingly.”
It is mind-boggling. Even today, people are not that ambitious to try to build something that could last for a thousand years. (Well, we’d rather want to make things that don’t last long to create another business opportunity.) But ancient people had such a strong, even desperate yearning for something that would last almost eternally. That strong will made something seemingly impossible, possible. You can see it in pyramids. You can see it in Horyuji.
The secret to build a wooden structure that lasts 1000 years
But of course, the will or ambition itself cannot build something as extraordinary as Horyuji. It had to be accompanied by solid skills. In the case of Horyuji, one of the extraordinary skills the original builders had was the capacity to “read” the wood, Nishioka says.
As an organic material, wood is considerably uneven and unpredictable for building. It’s not just about the lengths, diameter and age. Wood also expands or shrinks depending on the moisture content (which changes even after it’s in use). It bends toward a certain direction, depending on the angle at which the tree grew relative to the Sun. Some grow faster and some grow more slowly, affecting the sturdiness. The location where the lumber was to be used determined how susceptible it was to moisture and the potential to rot.
Horyuji pillars made of Japanese cypress. Ancient woodworkers only had simple planes to finish them, yet they achieved beautiful entasis. It continues to impress visitors 1,300 years after the construction. By 663highland, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
If that was not enough, there were no sawmills available for Horyuji builders. There were no tools that would cut open the wood in a straight line. The only tools they had were something like a froe or shake axe to cleave wood, by splitting or riving it along the grain. Because of this “crudeness,” people had to be extensively knowledgeable about the wood they would cut.
All those factors had to be taken into consideration BEFORE each piece of lumber was to be used: no mistakes were tolerated because they could cause the building to collapse. It is an enormous amount of information to process at once. Plus, since there were no effective transportation methods at that time, people had to live with what they had.
Their extensive skills to be able to read the history and condition of each and every tree helped them to build something that would survive 1,300 years.
According to Nishioka, we’ve lost these great skills of tree “reading” over time. Not only that, it is said that there are only less than one hundred Miya-daiku’s in Japan. While technology continues to thrive and change the impossibles to the possible, we are losing our own skills that made so many impossibles possible. Although we sort of assume that all the skills can be reproduced using technology, it’s not that certain. Techniques hat emerge from people’s own skills are beautiful, but machines and artificial technologies can only guarantee functionality, not the beauty.
Reference： Tsunekazu Nishioka (1978), 法隆寺を支えた木（The timber that has been supporting the Horyuji building), NHK Books, Tokyo, Japan
