The World's Largest Bronze Buddha

- February 01, 2016

On our second day in Kyoto we travelled by coach to Nara, a small town located about 60-minutes outside of Kyoto. Our first stop was the temple of Tōdai-ji to see the world's largest bronze statue of Buddha.

Tōdai-ji (Eastern Great Temple), is a Buddhist temple complex, that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples. Its Great Buddha Hall (Daibutsuden), houses the 49 foot / 15m high bronze statue of the Buddha, known in Japanese simply as Daibutsu. The temple also serves as the Japanese headquarters of the Kegon school of Buddhism.

The temple is a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site as one of the "Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara", together with seven other sites including temples, shrines and places in the city of Nara.

The Great Buddha Hall (Daibutsuden) has been rebuilt twice after fire. The current building was finished in 1709, and although immense—57 metres (187 ft) long and 50 metres (160 ft) wide—it is actually 30% smaller than its predecessor. Until 1998, it was the world's largest wooden building.

The Great Buddha statue has been recast several times for various reasons, including earthquake damage. The current hands of the statue were made in the Momoyama Period (1568–1615), and the head was made in the Edo period (1615–1867).

Dimensions of the Daibutsu

The temple gives the following dimensions for the statue:

• Height: 14.98 m (49.1 ft)

• Face: 5.33 m (17.5 ft)

• Eyes: 1.02 m (3.3 ft)

• Nose: 0.5 m (1.6 ft)

• Ears: 2.54 m (8.3 ft)

The statue's shoulders are 28 meters across and there are 960 six curls atop its head. The Birushana Buddhas golden halo is 87 foot in diameter with 16 images each 8 feet tall.

All of the images were taken on the new Fujifilm X-Pro2 or X-T1 using the three zoom lenses - XF10-24mm f4, 16-55mm f2.8 or 50-140mm f2.8.

For more information on Tōdai-ji on the japan-guide.com website CLICK HERE