I got a request to make a Buddha statue using a Japanese torreya tree standing in the premise of the temple, and it was my first time receiving such a request. They explained that they had to cut the tree and wanted to make a memorial.

Japanese torreya has been a material I have been familiar with since I was a student, and I appreciate the opportunity to attend the whole process from the ceremony of tree cutting to the finishing of the statue. I visited the temple before the ceremony and there I found a young, thin tree.

A heavy rain came in the summer before we were scheduling the ceremony. There was a flood in the temple, and both the main hall and the tree got soaked. Then COVID 19 came, so we had to reschedule the whole process including the ceremony and lumbering.

As I started carving, the material turned out to have lots of knots and damage, and the wood grain was uneven. We don’t usually select this kind of wood material for carving, and if we find knots and damage, we usually put fillers, so I talked to the owner of the temple about what to do.

The owner’s request was to leave them as they were, since he thought that the knots are also part of the tree’s path of life, and that they even help convey the stories of the flood and how the tree turned into a statue for the next generation.

The statue represents the personality of the tree and the heart the temple put in it. I really appreciate that I had this precious opportunity.