This 350-Year-Old Japan Temple Sells Ramen To Fund A Special Project, And Visitors Love It

Hozoin Temple in Kyoto runs a 'restaurant' serving vegetarian ramen ('terasoba') to fund a conservation project deeply linked to its history. The ramen has become popular with visitors.

Hozoin Temple, a 350-year-old Buddhist temple at Uji in Kyoto prefecture in southeast Japan, has of late seen an increased footfall of visitors, and its cash box is also jingling. The reason is a special offering — a bowl of 'terasoba' (temple noodles) prepared by temple volunteers. This preparation of ramen, made with all-vegetarian ingredients, is not only delicious but affordable too, according to visitor accounts.

The temple restaurant, which opens three days a week, started in October 2022, and sells only 30 bowls every day, according to a 2023 report in Japanese media outlet The Asahi Shimbun. Each bowl costs 600 yen (around Rs 355) including tax, meaning the temple earns 54,000 yen a week from the ramen sale.

Built in 1669, the temple with a rich history had to open this restaurant for a specific reason. It needed to make some extra money to be able to fund the maintenance of their collection of 60,0000 wooden blocks — 'Tetsugenban issaikyo hangi' — used for printing classic Buddhist texts. According to a report in the South China Morning Post, the Japanese government designated 48,000 of these planks as “important cultural properties”.

These strips are kept in an old storage room of the temple with no cooling or heating system, the report said, adding that temple authorities realised the classics kept there were "prone to mould and worms", and needed better maintenance "so they can be passed on to future generations”.

However, the manual labour that was required to maintain the wood was expensive, and the temple's income from traditional sources was not enough to cover the cost. 

“...sufficient funds are needed for preservation. Altogether, the cost is at least 500 million yen (US$3.5 million), possibly even 1 billion yen,” the temple abbot was quoted as saying in the SCMP report.

The Asahi Shimbun report said the temple had asked the local Kyoto government and the country's Cultural Affairs Agency to support its project to study and preserve the wooden blocks. However, it also decided to come out with a plan of its own to make some extra money to cover the costs.

How The Temple Ramen Plan Come About

The Hozoin Temple launched its Tetsugen Project — aimed at conservation and maintenance of the wooden blocks — in February 2020.

To promote their work, the Japanese media report said, the temple had initially thought about developing temple sweets and sell them, but decided on ramen on the suggestion of a volunteer who had in the past worked in the food industry.

Among those involved in the project was also a monk who was certified to supervise food sanitation.

They finally got a business permit and started the restaurant on the temple grounds.

According to the report, only one customer arrived on the first day, but the word spread fast and soon more people started to drop in.

The temple opens the restaurant to the public on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays for three hours from 11 am to 2 pm, and closes every day after 30 bowls are sold. Visitors are entertained on a first-come-first-served basis, unless a table is booked in advance. 

The ramen is made following the Buddhist cooking tradition, in which the killing of animals is prohibited. Bamboo shoots, corn, wakame seaweed, red pepper, and tremellales are the five toppings used in the recipe, which the temple claims to have developed on its own.

The Asahi Shimbun report said the selection of the ingredients also follows a Buddhist teaching, “goshiki” — the five colours of blue, yellow, red, white and black that "represent the spirit and wisdom of Buddha".

The "decisive factor” in the taste, however, is supposed to be a Taiwanese spice, magaw, which looks like black pepper, according to the report.

“It sinks deep into my soul,” a visitor was quoted as saying about the bowl of ramen soup she was served at the temple.

The restaurant offers ramen with different broths according to season — miso and soymilk ramen in winters, ramen with a thin soy sauce in spring, a salt-based one for summer, and a thick soy sauce one for fall.

With more people coming in, the temple is able to both make some money and promote its work towards the preservation of its cultural assets. The money earned from the sale of ramen will go to the conservation project.

While it has been some time since the project was launched, the topic created a buzz online and sparked discussions after it was reported by some Chinese media outlets, the SCMP report said.

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History Of The 350-Year-Old Hozoin Temple 

The Hozoin Temple was said to have been started by Tetsugen Doko (1630-1682), a Zen Master (an experienced teacher of Zen Buddhism) and important early leader of Buddhism, during the Edo Period (1603-1867). It is one of the many temples in the Manpukuji complex in Uji.

According to the Asahi Shimbun report, Tetsugen was a follower of Chinese Zen master Ingen (1592-1673), who had started the Obakushu school of Buddhism. Manpukuji is the head temple of this sect.

The Hozoin Temple owns the “Tetsugenban issaikyo hangi”, the 60,000-odd wooden strips that can reprint all the Buddhist sutras.

It was Tetsugen Doko who had completed the collection in 1681 working on about 7,000 volumes of Buddhist sutras Ingen had provided the temple with as a copytext, the Asahi Shimbun report said.

The blocks facilitated mass printing of the Buddhist sutras, which in turn helps spread Buddhism. The sutras had to be manually copied earlier.

The wooden blocks has since been with the Hozoin Temple, which believes it's the responsibility of the owner of cultural assets to manage and preserve them for future generations.