Priests prepare for Doomsday

Press, 9 February 1984, Page 21

Priests prepare for Doomsday

A Buddhist temple priest in Japan has decided to supplement divine protection with something more practical — a nuclear fallout shelter beneath the temple’s main hall, writes Eliot Taylor, of Reuters, from Tokyo. A ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a new main hall and the underground crypt at the temple in Kyoto, Japan’s former capital, was held recently amid much public disquiet and opposition from other Buddhist leaders.

Some complained that the nuclear shelter contradicted Buddhist religious beliefs in which suffering is supposed to be stoically ignored, eliminated from consciousness, rather than positively avoided.

Not so, says the Kyoto temple chief priest, Shuhu Ogura, who is directing construction work. “I’m not going to deploy SS2Os in my temple. I’m just taking protective

steps. My main intention is to build a crypt (to house the ashes of the deceased). I took the opportunity also to make it function as a shelter, nothing more.” The crypt, due to be completed in March next year, will have reinforced ferro-concrete walls, thick steel doors, and will accommodate 200 people for up to two months. According to the design plans, it will be built six metres below ground and will be strong enough to withstand a nuclear blast and temperatures of up to 1200 degrees centigrade. Several other Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines around the country are considering taking similar precautions against Doomsday. A spokesman for the Uemura Giken Company, which designs and sells nuclear shelters, says: “We have good prospects of clinching some other contracts.”