Deeply rooted in San Mateo

The incense burner stands at the front of the temple’s sanctuary, or hondo, in front of the temple’s shrine. Above the shrine hang the words ken shin: “to see truth.” 

“That’s what we aspire to do when we come into this space,” Adams said. 

The temple has deep roots in San Mateo’s Japanese American community, founded by first-generation immigrants in the early 1900s. Its congregation, called a sangha in Sanskrit, has spent the past 114 years in North Central San Mateo building a tight-knit Buddhist community that spans generations. 

“We all grow old together,” said Yuko Suruki, the temple’s current vice president and head of Sunday dharma school, before Sunday service in July.

This temple belongs to the Jodo Shinshu tradition of Buddhism and is part of the Buddhist Churches of America. Founded in 13th-century Japan by Shinran Shonin, Jodo Shinshu Buddhism reveres Amida Buddha, the Buddha of light and life. 

“It’s a household Buddhism,” said Juliet Bost Yokoe, a minister’s assistant and former co-president of the temple’s Junior Young Buddhist Association. “It’s based around … encountering enlightenment … absolute truth, just being a person and living your daily life.”

The temple held its 70th annual bazaar in June, a fundraiser featuring food, games and taiko drumming. Its annual Obon celebration, a festival in memory of loved ones who have died, was Aug. 10. 

A long history

The temple has been housed on South Claremont Street since the early 1950s, but its first official service was in 1910, in Tetsuo Yamanouchi’s living room on First Avenue. Yamanouchi owned the Imperial Laundry next door and had immigrated from Hiroshima in 1904, leaving a Zen Buddhist temple before ordination. 

According to a history published by the temple on its centennial, Yamanouchi formed the church in response to requests from other Japanese Americans for religious services and guidance. At that time, there were only about 13 Japanese American people living in San Mateo, and the land west of El Camino Real was still open meadows dotted with poppies, eucalyptus and oaks. 

The temple had no permanent meeting place during the prewar period, so when the sangha grew too large for the Yamanouchi’s living room it moved around the North Central neighborhood. Restrictive covenants and local policies meant that people of color couldn’t own homes and businesses outside the neighborhood, Adams said, and California has a long history of anti-Asian discrimination. 

“When we think about the history of any … Japanese American Buddhist temple in California, you know, we can’t really appreciate that without thinking about the experience of the Japanese American community, which has overcome tremendous hardship and discrimination,” he said. 

For its first few decades, the temple held services in a rented storefront, a Japanese language school on Delaware Street and Second Avenue, and the Takahashi Market on South Claremont Street. 

Every Sunday when the market was closed, said lifelong temple member Michiko Mukai, her siblings would take her to services there. 

Internment

Mukai was born and raised in San Mateo, and attended services at the temple before and after World War II. When the war broke out and President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted Executive Order 9066, temple members were sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center at the San Bruno race track, where Mukai remembers sleeping on body bags stuffed with straw. 

Jodo Shinshu services were held in the Tanforan mess hall, where San Mateo, San Francisco, and Palo Alto residents gathered together, according to the temple’s centennial history. Earlier this year, the temple held a service at the Tanforan BART memorial on the 82nd anniversary of its opening. 

Bay Area residents were sent from Tanforan to Topaz, Utah, Mukai said. Some families, like hers, were deemed “disloyal” and sent to the Tule Lake camp in California. Residents were released and could return to San Mateo in September 1945. 

“It was tough, because, you know, we came back with nothing and had to start from scratch,” she said. 

Coming back

The temple held services at “an old shack” on Second Avenue and Delaware Street after the war, where Mukai also attended Japanese school. The sangha built its social hall on South Claremont Street in 1952 and has remained there ever since.

“At that time, I considered the church as my second home because that was where we [were] all able to congregate, and share our experiences,” Mukai said. 

Mukai joined the Junior Young Buddhist Association as a teenager and has remained involved with the temple ever since. She served a stint as temple president in the 1990s, and taught children’s Sunday dharma school for more than 40 years. She remains active in the Buddhist Women’s Association. 

The temple has also hosted Scout troops and youth sports leagues, the Rev. Adams said. Temple member Roy Ikeda was a Boy Scout in San Francisco in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and he remembers the temple’s scout troop coming to the city for meetings and activities. Last year at the bazaar, he sold raffle tickets alongside one of the members of that troop. 

The temple has expanded over the years and now includes the hondo, classrooms and a kitchen. 

Shifting times

There were about 40 to 50 members at Sunday services before the pandemic, the Rev. Adams said. When the pandemic hit, the temple immediately pivoted to Zoom services. 

“It’s really had a lasting impact,” Adams said. 

Services are hybrid these days, with about 20 people attending in person and around 40 on Zoom. That’s fewer people in the hondo than pre-pandemic, but more people attending the service in total. 

“[COVID] was really difficult and we were challenged, but something better came out of it, I feel,” said Suruki, the temple’s vice president and dharma school organizer.

Ikeda, who grew up in San Francisco and worked there and Oakland as a lawyer, attends Sunday services in person and the dharma discussions afterward. He did not grow up religious, he said, though his cousins have a long history with the temple. 

Ikeda became a temple member about a year ago after moving to San Mateo. As he goes to more events and gets to know more people, he has started to feel like a member of the sangha, he said. When he missed this year’s bazaar because he was sick with COVID, temple members brought him food from the celebration. 

“It’s not something that you would expect people to do on such a busy day, but I think that’s a good example of the welcoming, the friendly atmosphere there,” he said. 

The temple hosts several events and festivals throughout the year, from the bazaar and Obon in the summer to mochi making (mochitsuki) at New Year’s and Buddha’s birthday (Hanamatsuri) in April. 

Youth involvement

Some of these events, including mochitsuki, a dharma school Halloween party and a Parents’ Day brunch, are organized by the temple’s Junior Young Buddhists’ Association. It’s a small but mighty high school group that organizes temple events, volunteers at the bazaar, and connects with other JYBAs in California through youth-led conferences and other social events. 

“Me joining Junior YBA originally is, like, my way of kind of giving back to the temple community,” Kate Sato, one of this year’s co-presidents, said. 

One of the group’s first events was helping organize the inaugural bazaar, she said, and the Junior YBA has staffed the shaved ice booth there for years. The group also runs the booth in tribute to Hishi Oto, a Junior YBA advisor who died last year, Phoebe Taylor, the other co-president, said. 

“He loved the shaved ice stand, so putting in the same amount of love and effort is very rewarding,” Taylor said. 

The Junior YBA room, Bost Yokoe said, is full of posters, books and ritual implements from throughout the temple’s history. The social hall is lined with portraits of former ministers and temple presidents. 

“I think that history is still there,” they said. “There’s always, like, lingering things around the temple that have been there long before you were born.” 

Houses of worship of many kinds have an uncertain future ahead of them. A Gallup survey published in March found that most religious groups have seen a decline in attendance and predicted that “church attendance will likely continue to decline in the future, given younger Americans’ weaker attachments to religion.” 

Members say the temple’s sangha is aging, and its future is in the hands of the younger generation.

“Us ladies are getting older, a lot of the membership are unable to help anymore,” Mukai said. “We’re getting to rely more and more on the Junior YBA.” 

The energy of Junior YBA has been a “bright spot” for the temple, said the Rev. Adams. He hopes that this generation can help shape the temple into a space that’s meaningful and relevant to them. 

“I hope that generation has the opportunity to really lead us forward,” he said. 

Co-presidents Sato and Taylor hope that the Junior YBA continues to grow and expand its community involvement. They have seven new members joining this year, bringing their membership up to 14. They’ve been trying to expand their social media presence, including an Instagram account, Sato said.

“[One goal is to] really just make it known that we are a group that’s still very active and thriving, and a big part of our temple community,” Sato said. 

Bost Yokoe hopes the temple grows by adapting to a changing membership, engaging with young members, and leaning into new things. 

“I think San Mateo is, it’s on its way, but I encourage the sangha to really not shy away from having difficult conversations or asking difficult questions,” they said.

Mukai, who has been attending temple services since the 1930s, hopes that the temple will continue to operate, stabilize and grow. To do that, it has to be more inclusive, she said, and more people need to support their home church.  

It’s important to accept change, she said, including a changing sangha.

“Buddhism has taught me, you just have to roll with the punches instead of fighting it,” she said.

The present

No matter what the future brings, the sangha is still gathering on Sundays both in person and virtually. Pews face the shrine at the front of the hondo, and incense fills the air: many offerings, one aroma. 

The golden statue of Amida Buddha shines in the center of the shrine, surrounded by depictions of his Pure Land. The Pure Land is the Buddha’s land of enlightenment, a “land of bliss” that you awaken into after death. The Rev. Adams also describes it as an awakening to wisdom and compassion through the Buddha’s teachings.

Suruki, head of Sunday dharma school, is here, waiting for services to start as the sounds of the pianist warming up drift in from the next room. 

“People say different things,” she said, “but for me, the land of bliss could be found here, in where you are.”