Repair of 1,000 noted Buddhist statues in Kyoto completed

December 22, 2017

Kyoto- Preservation and repair work for 1,001 statues of thousand-armed Kannon Bodhisattva at the Sanjusangendo Buddhist hall in Kyoto, western Japan, has been completed.

The last set of statues that have undergone overhaul were installed at the hall, a popular sightseeing spot, on Friday.

It took 45 years for all statues, designated as important cultural properties, to be repaired, with each of them taken out of the hall in turns.

The preservation and repair work started in fiscal 1973, using the Cultural Affairs Agency's subsidy program for such properties and national treasures. After an annual pace of 15 to 30 statues, about 40 have been repaired every year since 2013.

The work mainly involved cleaning up the dust and preventing the gold foil from coming off the statues, the oldest ones of which are from the late years of the Heian period (794 to around 1185).

It cost about 920 million yen in total to repair all of the 1,001 statues.

Friday's installation brought together all statues excluding five that are currently on loan to museums.

"When the weather is fine and the rays of the morning sun come in, they look most beautiful," said Seiko Tabuchi, a senior official of Myohoin, the Buddhist temple that manages the Sanjusangendo hall. The brightness is "completely different" from before the repair, Tabuchi said. Jiji Press