Kurenboh Chohouin Buddhist Temple Gallery

Kurenboh, a part of the Chohouin Buddhist Temple of Kuramae, Tokyo, is used as a "Meditation Gallery." In it, the owners have sought to create a meeting place for modern culture and Japanese Buddhism. The gallery (a non-profit, non-commercial entity) opened in 2006, and is a set of three small rooms created by the architect Makoto Yokomizo. It is based on the traditional scheme of the Chashitsu, or Tea Ceremony-Room, accommodates only two or three people at a time, and is of a minimalist but elegant design characterized by whiteness, purity and silence. In this unusual space, all architectural corners are rounded, distances become indistinct, and works of art appear with exceptional vividness. The gallery aims to calm the mind of the visitor, to enable him or her to concentrate entirely on the art at hand, to wander mentally within the universe of the artist, and through this, to have a little of the kind of transcendent experience that, following another path, people have sought to reach through the disciplines of Buddhist meditative practice.