The empress Horyuji 🙏

#fallingseason #timetotravel The grounds of Hōryūji (Hōryū Temple) house the world's oldest surviving wooden structures, conveying images of Japan as it existed more than 1,300 years ago, during the Asuka Period (A.D. mid 6th - beginning of 8th c.). The story of Hōryūji's founding can be discovered in the historical writings engraved on the back of the halo of the Yakushi Nyorai Buddha statue, located on the eastern side of the room in the temple's Main Hall, and in the official inventory of Hōryūji property holdings recorded in 747. According to these records, the emperor Yōmei vowed to build a temple and an image of a Buddha as a form of prayer for his own recovery from illness-a vow he was never fated to fulfill, for he died shortly thereafter. These same writings state how Empress Suiko and Crown Prince Shōtoku fulfilled Emperor Yōmei's deathbed wish by building in 607 a temple and a statue of a Buddha, to which the temple was dedicated. The Buddha statue was of the Yakushi Nyorai (Bhaisajyaguru)―literally, "arrival as a healer"―and the temple was named the Ikaruga Temple (after the name of the location), or Hōryūji ("Temple of the Flourishing Law [of Buddhism]")