Jimokuji Temple

Two Buildings, Seven Years Apart

Jimokuji (甚目寺, also written Jimoku-ji and known locally as Jimokuji Kannon) is a Shingon Buddhist temple in Ama City, Aichi Prefecture, whose three-storied pagoda of 1627 and East Gate of 1634 were designated Important Cultural Properties of Japan on 14 November 1953.

The temple's own account of itself reaches back to 597. A fisherman named Jimoku Tatsumaro is said to have drawn a gilded image of the Sacred Kannon from the sea, at a time when the water still came this far inland, and to have built a thatched hall for it on the beach. A later imperial connection, prayers offered for the recovery of Emperor Tenji, brought the temple official patronage and the scale that came with it.

Today Jimokuji belongs to the Chisan branch of Shingon Buddhism, takes the Sacred Kannon as its principal image, and counts as one of the Owari Shikannon, the four Kannon temples positioned to guard Nagoya Castle. Five of its holdings carry national Important Cultural Property status.

Two of those five are buildings on this ledger entry, and they are worth treating separately. The pagoda and the East Gate went up seven years apart, in different parts of the precinct, doing entirely different jobs.

The Pagoda: an Edo Building Speaking Muromachi

The pagoda is registered as a three-bay, three-storied structure with a formal tile roof, dated to Kan'ei 4, that is 1627, in the early Edo period. It stands as one structure under designation number 01254.

The date is not an estimate. Ama City records that the inscription on the ornamental finials of the balustrade gives Kan'ei 4 and names the building as a donation. The donor is remembered as Yoshida Hanjūrō Masatsugu, a Nagoya money changer, and September of that year as the month of construction.

What went up in 1627 replaced something older. An earthquake in Tenshō 13, 1585, is said to have brought down the previous pagoda, and the rebuilding drew on salvage: the carpenters reused as much of the old timber as they could. The consequence is visible in the proportions. Although the building belongs to the seventeenth century by date, its form is generally described as carrying the Muromachi manner forward largely unchanged, which is to say it looks a good deal older than it is. Buildings that preserve an earlier style through reconstruction are not rare in Japan, but few make the case as plainly as this one.

Height is one point where the sources part company. The temple's own website gives 28 metres and calls the pagoda among the tallest of its type in Japan; other accounts put it at about 25 metres. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database does not record a height, so a visitor comparing figures should know that both are in circulation.

The interior once held the seated image of Aizen Myōō, itself a nationally designated Important Cultural Property, which has since been moved.

The East Gate: a Roadside Survivor

The East Gate is a four-legged gate with a gabled roof, now covered in copper sheet, and is registered as one building dated to Kan'ei 11, that is 1634. Ink inscriptions on the timbers establish the year.

Stylistically it looks backwards rather than forwards. Ama City describes the gate as retaining the manner of the Momoyama period, the generation before it was built, and the reading holds up in the timber: heavy posts, subsidiary supports behind the main columns, no doors hung in the opening. It is a gate that frames rather than closes.

Its orientation is the historical point. The East Gate faces the Kamikaidō, also called the Tsushima Kaidō, the road that branched from the Minoji at Sugaguchi in Kiyosu, ran to Jimokuji Kannon, and continued through Kida towards Tsushima. Pilgrims and traders on that road entered the precinct here. The temple's address, Higashi-monmae, meaning "in front of the East Gate," still records the arrangement.

The gate came down in the Nōbi earthquake of 1891, one of the largest inland earthquakes in Japanese history, whose epicentral region covered this part of the Nōbi plain. Local tradition holds that it was raised again as it stood, without dismantling and rebuilding. Standing in front of it, that account is easy to believe.

One caution on dates. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives 14 November 1953 as the designation date for both buildings, while Ama City's cultural properties page gives 4 November 1953. The discrepancy is a single digit and the national database takes precedence, but it is worth knowing before you compare notes with a local sign.

Visiting Jimokuji

The precinct opens from 8:00 to 16:00, and admission costs nothing; fees apply only to requested prayer services. On 31 December the gates open again from around 23:00 until roughly 2:00 the next morning for the turn of the year.

Access is straightforward. Jimokuji Station on the Meitetsu Tsushima Line is a five-minute walk away, which makes this one of the easier Important Cultural Properties in Aichi to reach without a car. For drivers there are twelve free spaces. The address is 24 Higashi-monmae, Jimokuji, Ama City, and the temple's telephone number is 052-442-3076.

Plan around the Great South Gate. The Nandaimon, the two-storied gate housing the Niō guardian figures and itself an Important Cultural Property designated in 1900, is undergoing a major conservation programme running from 2024 through 2026. The temple has announced it as the Reiwa Great Restoration and has published a dedicated website for it. Visitors during this period should expect the temple's most photographed structure to be under wraps and should enter by another gate.

The precinct is at its most alive on market days. A morning market runs on the 12th of each month and a produce market on the 21st, and the setsubun rites in February draw substantial crowds.

On photography, the temple publishes no general rule. Common practice at working Shingon temples is that the grounds are open to the camera while hall interiors and ongoing rituals are not, so the safe approach is to shoot outdoors and ask at the temple office if you are unsure.