A small chapel is located on the territory of a Buddhist temple complex in the city of Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture (in the early 2000s, this area became part of the "Greater Tokyo"). The architects did not just reconstruct the 40-year-old building, they built a difficult path to it, filled with traditional symbolism, but meeting modern ideas about the farewell ritual. First, the high fences separating the buildings of the complex were removed. Secondly, the path leading from the temple and the farewell hall to the ossuary where the burials are located was made perfectly straight and planted with trees and flowers (visual demonstration of the changing seasons and the passage of time). Thus, it was possible to clearly distinguish between the burial area and the area of veneration. Around this path, a symbolic path of tranquility and memory was organized with a cleansing washbasin, benches, several statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha.
In order to finally get into the ossuary, you need to cross the steps of a small artificial reservoir, symbolically separating the world of the living and the world of the dead. The total area of the three-storey building, finished on the outside with black wooden planks, is less than 200 m22… The architects chose the shape of a regular octagon to symbolize the universe. There is a compulsory washbasin installed at the entrance. The dim light in this zone helps to prepare psychologically for the change of worlds. Further, the visitor finds himself on a twisted staircase, placed in an earthen volume with a light hole at the very top and is almost literally underground. The space of the ossuary itself continues to form the model of the Universe: the rays of light penetrating through the cracks of the black bamboo ceiling are perceived as stars, and the illuminated doors of the cells indicate the planets.
The architects emphasize that they thought of their construction not as a gloomy temple of sorrow, but as a place of blessed memory and celebration of life, important and even attractive for many generations. Such an integral and natural part of family leisure: children first come here very young, with their parents, and play in the water of the pond, then, having matured - already with their own children, and at the end of their lives they find rest here and their grown children bring little ones to church grandchildren. The result is an extremely visual image of the eternal circle of life. And unexpectedly symbolic in this context is the name of the bureau that turned the “architecture of death” into “the architecture of love”.
