Nara Deer Park & Ancient Temples

Nara became Japan's first permanent capital in the year seven hundred and ten, before that the court moved every time an emperor died, on the theory that death made a palace spiritually impure. The Nara period lasted only eighty-four years, ending in seven hundred and ninety-four when the capital shifted north to Kyoto. But during those eight decades, Nara was the centre of a civilization in rapid transformation, absorbing Buddhism from China and Korea and pouring enormous energy into temples, art, and scholarship.

What you are about to walk through is the physical legacy of that moment. The park stretching ahead of you covers over five hundred hectares of woodland, meadows, and temple grounds, all of it designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in nineteen ninety-eight. Eight individual monuments within the park share the designation, recognising Nara as one of the birthplaces of Japanese Buddhist culture.

And the deer. There are approximately twelve hundred sika deer roaming freely through this park right now, and they have been designated a national treasure of Japan. According to Shinto belief, when the god Takemikazuchi arrived at the Kasuga Taisha shrine, he rode on a white deer, and ever since then the deer of Nara have been considered divine messengers. Killing a deer here was once punishable by death. Today it is simply considered extremely bad form.

When you are ready, walk east along Sanjo-dori toward the first trees of the park. The deer will find you before you find them.

The pagoda you are looking at is a reconstruction. The original burned down in a fire — it burned down four more times after that, in fact. The current structure dates from fourteen-twenty-six, which makes it nearly six hundred years old, the latest in a sequence of rebuildings that stretches back to seven-thirty. Each time the pagoda burned, the Fujiwara rebuilt it, because temples and pagodas were not just religious structures. They were declarations of wealth, piety, and permanence. Burning and rebuilding was in some ways an act of devotion.

The main hall of Kofukuji contains some of the finest Buddhist sculpture in Japan. The Tokondo treasury hall houses a group of eighth-century bronze figures including the famous Ashura statue — a three-faced, six-armed fighting deity with a young, almost sorrowful expression that has made it one of the most reproduced images in Japanese art. The Ashura embodies the complexity of Buddhist cosmology, simultaneously divine and caught in a cycle of conflict, which is perhaps why the image resonates with modern viewers who have never set foot in a temple.

The open square around the temple is often full of deer, who have learned that tourists near temples tend to carry crackers. Watch your bag if you bought shika-senbei at the station — the deer are polite by reputation but persistent by nature, and a particularly confident deer will attempt to eat whatever is within reach, including your map.

The annual Shoso-in Exhibition in late October and early November is one of the most remarkable museum events in Japan. The Shoso-in is an eighth-century imperial storehouse on the grounds of Todai-ji, the great temple just ahead, and it holds over nine thousand objects that were the personal belongings of Emperor Shomu — the emperor who commissioned the great Buddha you are about to see. Once a year, about sixty of these objects are put on public display. They include Persian glassware, lapis lazuli game pieces, musical instruments, textiles, and medicines from as far away as central Asia, all preserved in near-perfect condition by the dry air of the storehouse for twelve hundred and seventy years. The Silk Road did not end in China. It ended here, in a wooden building in a Nara deer park.

Even if you walk past the museum today, hold that image in your mind as you move through the park. Every temple, every statue, every sutra scroll buried in the earth of this plateau was produced in a city that was genuinely at the intersection of civilizations, absorbing and transforming everything that arrived from across Asia.

On each side of the central passage, protected behind wooden latticing, stands one of a pair of Nio guardian figures — muscular, furious-faced warrior gods whose job is to protect the temple from evil spirits. These figures were carved in twelve hundred and three by the sculptors Unkei and Kaikei, two of the most celebrated artists of the Kamakura period, along with their workshop assistants. The carving was completed in just sixty-nine days, an almost incomprehensible achievement when you stand close enough to see the individual veins in the arms and the textural detail of the hair. Each figure stands over eight metres tall and is made from assembled blocks of Japanese cypress.

Unkei and Kaikei brought a new realism to Japanese sculpture, moving away from the formal idealism of the Nara period toward figures that breathe with tension and energy. The Nio at this gate are often called the finest examples of that style, and looking at the controlled fury in their faces — the flared nostrils, the parted lips, the suggestion of breath held before an explosion of movement — it is very easy to see why.

Beyond the gate, the approach to the great hall stretches ahead through a corridor of ancient cedar trees. The deer wander freely here too. In the distance you can see the curved roof of Todai-ji's main hall beginning to resolve above the treeline. Walk toward it.

Emperor Shomu ordered the construction of this hall and the great statue inside it in seven-forty-three, during a period of devastating smallpox epidemics, drought, and political instability. The edict ordering the casting of the great Buddha declared that the emperor wished to create a symbol of protection for the nation, and that the entire country should participate — not just the court and the nobility, but ordinary people, who were invited to contribute even a single handful of earth or a single twig of copper. This was deliberate political and religious theatre, an attempt to bind the nation together around a common act of devotion.

The construction was staggering. The main hall required over two hundred thousand workers, fifty thousand skilled craftsmen, and the use of vast quantities of lumber that required the clearing of entire hillsides. The state effectively mobilised the economy of the entire country for a decade. The project came close to bankrupting the government.

And what is inside this hall — the statue itself — we will see in just a moment. But before you enter, stand at the base of the steps and look up at the building's scale one more time. The Daibutsuden is not trying to be delicate. It is trying to be the biggest possible container for the biggest possible idea: that a single act of collective devotion can shelter an entire civilisation.

Buy your entry ticket, take a breath, and step inside.

The casting was one of the most technically ambitious achievements of the ancient world. The statue was constructed in eight separate phases, each poured in stages working upward from the base. The process consumed approximately four hundred and thirty-seven tonnes of bronze, one hundred and thirty tonnes of lead, and enough mercury to plate the entire surface in gold — and the gilding required so much mercury that historians believe it caused significant illness and possibly death among the craftsmen who applied it. The statue was completed in seven fifty-two and consecrated at an extraordinary ceremony attended by ten thousand monks and the leaders of every Buddhist nation with diplomatic ties to Nara's court.

The Buddha's right hand is raised in the gesture called abhaya mudra, meaning have no fear. His left hand rests in his lap in varada mudra, the gesture of granting wishes. These two gestures together say something very direct to anyone standing before him: I see you, I am not afraid, and I will give you what you need.

Walk around the base of the statue slowly. Notice the restored sections of the original pedestal, the smaller flanking Bodhisattva figures, and the octagonal lantern in the courtyard outside. One of the hall's wooden columns near the rear has a hole cut through its base said to be the same size as the Buddha's nostril — local tradition holds that anyone who can squeeze through the hole will be blessed with enlightenment in the next life. Children make it through easily. Adults of a certain build negotiate with dignity.

The veranda of Nigatsu-do runs along the outside of the hall at a dizzying height, supported by a framework of wooden pillars driven into the slope. Stand out there and look west toward Todai-ji's main hall below you, the rooftops of Nara, and on a clear day the mountains of Osaka Prefecture in the distance. This is one of the great views of the Kansai region, and almost no one is up here compared to the crowds around the Great Buddha.

There is a stillness to this part of the hill that the lower precinct lacks. The cedar forest above the hall is officially designated as a primeval forest, part of the Kasugayama World Heritage zone, and it has not been cut since the eighth century. Twelve hundred years of growth. The trees here are as old as the city itself.

But what you will notice first are the lanterns. There are approximately three thousand stone lanterns lining the approach paths through the forest, and another thousand hanging bronze lanterns inside the shrine buildings themselves. Most of them were donated by worshippers over the past twelve centuries. Twice a year, during the Setsubun Mantoro in early February and the Obon Mantoro in mid-August, all four thousand lanterns are lit simultaneously. The effect, with the forest dark and every stone lantern glowing orange in the mist, is one of the most otherworldly experiences Japan offers.

The shrine is still a living place of worship. You will see priests in white robes and tall black hats, and worshippers stopping to clap twice and bow at the outer offering hall. The deer here in the shrine precincts are especially tame, having been in close contact with pilgrims for over twelve hundred years. Some have learned to bow their heads when you hold out a cracker, a behavior that emerged spontaneously and has been passed down through the generations.

Take your time on the forested approach. The thousand-year-old cedars press close on both sides, the stone lanterns stretch ahead of you into the shadows, and the air smells of incense drifting from the inner precincts. This is the oldest layer of Nara, and it still feels it.

The genius of shakkei is that it requires no claim over the landscape it borrows. The borrowed view costs nothing and can never be owned — which may be why the technique feels so distinctly Japanese in its aesthetics. The garden at Isuien does not try to replicate the mountains or the temple. It simply frames them, and in doing so makes them more visible than they were before.

The garden changes character completely with the season. In spring, weeping cherries and azaleas turn the pond edges pink and red. In autumn, maples burn orange above the water. Even in winter, the structure of the pines and the subtle gray of the stones and gravel create a composition that requires no colour to work. Come in the late afternoon when the light drops across the rear garden and the borrowed roof of Todai-ji glows warm above the treeline. You will understand in about thirty seconds why garden designers still study this place.

There is a small teahouse inside where you can sit with matcha and a wagashi sweet. The deer cannot follow you here.

The quarter specialises in crafts that have been produced in Nara for centuries. Nara ink, still made here from pine soot and animal glue, was the preferred writing medium of Japanese scholars for over a thousand years. Nara sarashi, a type of finely bleached linen, was so prized by the imperial court that it became an official tribute tax. Several workshops in Naramachi still operate using centuries-old techniques, and many are open to visitors.

Walk slowly through the main lane and the side alleys. Push into the small cafes and craft shops. The machiya buildings that have been converted into restaurants here offer some of the best value meals in the city — Nara is famous for kakinoha-zushi, pressed sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves, and for miwa somen, the delicate hand-stretched noodles made in the mountains south of the city since the fourth century.

You have walked through twelve hundred years of Japanese history today, from the seventh-century deer of Kasuga Shrine to the Edo-period fabric hanging in a merchant's doorway. The deer park and the ancient temples will stay with you. But so might this last quiet street, with its wooden houses and hanging monkeys and the particular smell of old cities that have learned to hold their past gently.

This is where the walk ends. Kintetsu Nara Station is about ten minutes back to the northwest along Sanjo-dori. Take your time. The deer will be out there.