Japan Guide
Kyūshū
Sōfuku-ji
This is Nagasaki's most important Chinese Zen temple, founded in 1629 by Fujian immigrants and containing rare examples of Ming-period Chinese architecture. The entrance lies under a stocky, vermilion gate, which is followed by a wooden inner gate, Dai-ippon-mon, decorated with polychrome jigsaw-puzzle eaves. Both this gate and the Buddha hall (first building on the left inside the temple's stone-flagged courtyard) were actually shipped over from China and then pieced back together in Nagasaki. Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, occupies the hall's altar, flanked by eighteen individually expressed, gilded statues of Buddhist saints. A smaller, more faded hall lies at the back of the compound, its interior gloom broken only by the richly embroidered altar cloths, presided over by a Chinese goddess, the protectress of sailors, and her two blue-robed assistants. Finally, don't miss the vast cauldron, against the courtyard's south wall, in which monks supposedly boiled up porridge for five thousand people a day during a famine in 1681. Opening time: Daily 8am–5pm Price: ¥300