THE HIDDEN GODDESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE HIDDEN GODDESS.

LODGED IN TOKYO TEMPLE. JAPANESE IDOL OF MERCY. CONCEALED FOR 1000 YEARS.. Western scepticism is penetrating the Japanese mind and causing discuesion about the authenticity of the reports regarding the statue of the Goddess Kwannon, in Asakusa Temple, Tokyo. For more than ten centuries the statut has not been seen: The image, one foot and eight inches tall, has always been thought to be made of gold. No one has seen the image for centuries, but a wooden Kwannon, carved by the St. Jikaku, a Buddhist priest of the tenth century, as a copy, has induced the authorities ; of the temple to believe that the_ original image is also of wood. Since the authorities of the temple adhere to the time-honoured custom of thirteen cen--turies, an inspection of the image of •Kwannon has been impossible. Priest Disregarded Custom. St. Jikaku is said to have been the only one to disregard the tradition,' and he was able to do bo because of the reconstruction of the temple. It was at that time, legend says, that the priest carved his replica of the original Goddess of Mercy. The third Shogun, Tokugawa Iyemitsu, is said to have seen and admired it, but this is denied by the authorities of the temple. At the time of the Meiji restoration, when Buddhist temples suffered considerable persecution at the hands of the government, high officials of the government are said to have inspected, the temple, but the present caretaker says that the image was not exhibited. The Kwannon statue was wrapped in a Buddhist robe and encased in a triple or quadruple box. The government opened the first box, and then the next, but when they opened the last box, they were so frightened that they did not remove the robe. Present Temple Built in 1648. The present temple, which is now being reconstructed, was built by the third Tokugawa Shogun in 1648. Since that time the temple building has undergone repairs on a large scale every seventy years. The edifice, 108 feet square, is regarded as the representative temple in the Kwannon district of, Tokyo. The Asakusa temple is known as the most popularly patronised institution in the country, but the Fudo Temple at Narita, ,in Chiba Prefecture, has the greatest income, more than 300,000 yen a year, while that of the Asakusa Kwannon Temple is estimated at 170,000 yen.