Kotokuin

Kotokuin (高徳院) is a Buddhist temple of the Pure Land sect in the city of Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

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The temple is renowned for the Great Buddha (??, daibutsu), a monumental outdoor bronze statue of Amida Buddha which is one of the most famous icons of Japan. The statue stands at 13.35 meters high and weighs approximately 93 tons, and is the second largest monumental Buddha in Japan after Todaiji in Nara.

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The statue probably dates from 1252, in the Kamakura period, when temple records report the construction of a bronze statue. However, it is unclear whether that is the present statue. The statue was built inside a wooden temple but that building washed away in a tsunami sometime during the Muromachi period in the late fifteenth century. The statue remains.

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The statue is referred to as 'The Buddha at Kamakura' in several verses that preface the initial chapters of the novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling,1901.

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Buddhist: REDIRECT Buddhism...

Pure Land: Pure Land Buddhism (Chinese: 净土宗, J?ngtǔzōng; Japanese: 浄土宗, Jōdoshū; Vietnamese: ???, T?nh ?? T?ng), also known as Amidism, is a branch of Mahayana Buddhism and currently one of the most dominant schools of Buddhism in East Asia. It is t...

Sect: A sect is a small religious or political group that has branched off from a larger established group. Sects have many beliefs and practices in common with the religion or party that they have broken off from, but are differentiated by a number of doctrinal differences. In contrast, a denomination is...