Hiraizumi – Temples, Gardens and Archaeological Sites Representing the Buddhist Pure Land

Brief synthesisThe four Pure Land gardens of Hiraizumi, three focused on the sacred mountain Mount Kinkeisan, exemplify a fusion between the ideals of Pure Land Buddhism and indigenous Japanese concepts relating to the relationship between gardens, water and the surrounding landscape. The gardens and temples of Hiraizumi influenced those in other cities, notably Kamakura where one of the temples was based on Chûson-ji. Criterion (vi): The Pure Land Gardens of Hiraizumi clearly reflect the diffusion of Buddhism over south-east Asia and the specific and unique fusion of Buddhism with Japan's indigenous ethos of nature worship and ideas of Amida's Pure Land of Utmost Bliss. The remains of the complex of temples and gardens in Hiraizumi are symbolic manifestations of the Buddhist Pure Land on this earth. To protect the spatial landscape relating to Pure Land cosmology, the spatial integrity of these links need to be sustained.