Jimokuji Temple South Gate

The Oldest Gate in the Owari Plain

Jimokuji, a Shingon temple in the city of Ama west of Nagoya, is old enough that roof tiles from the seventh century have come out of its grounds. It counts among the Four Kannon of Owari, the temples positioned to guard the old castle town, and by tradition it was founded in 597. The building that announces all this to a visitor is the south gate, a two-story romon standing at the front of the precinct.

The gate is a three-bay structure with a single central passage, roofed in the hip-and-gable irimoya form with thin wooden shingles. It is the oldest wooden building in Ama and ranks among the earliest surviving gates in the prefecture. Walk through the central passage and two guardian figures, the Nio, flank you to either side.

Its age is a matter of honest disagreement. The Agency for Cultural Affairs assigns the gate to the late Kamakura period, a span from 1275 to 1332, on the evidence of its construction. Temple tradition dates it earlier, to 1196, built by order of Minamoto no Yoritomo with the warrior Kajiwara Kagetoki as supervisor, and a dismantling repair in 1902 reportedly turned up an ink inscription reading "raised in the seventh year of Kenkyu," that is 1196. The two accounts have not been reconciled, and a visitor can fairly hold both in mind.

Why the Gate Was Designated

The south gate was listed as an Important Cultural Property in 1900, one of the very earliest such designations in the country. Its value rests on age and on the clarity of its early carpentry, built in the Japanese wayo manner.

The structural detail rewards attention. Every pillar is round. On the lower story, three-stepped bracket complexes reach forward to carry the gallery above, edged by a railing whose ends flip upward. The upper story sets its pillars on a tighter spacing than the lower, with double board doors in the central bay front and back and board walls elsewhere; tail rafters thrust out diagonally to support deep eaves. Taken together, these are the marks of a substantial early gate, and they survive here with unusual completeness.

What to Look For on a Visit

The guardian figures in the lower passage are worth a pause. They are a prefectural cultural property in their own right, donated in 1597 by Fukushima Masanori, a warlord born in this district, and they give the gate a second layer of local history a few centuries younger than the structure itself.

Once through the gate, the precinct opens onto further designated buildings: a three-storied pagoda of 1627 and an east gate of 1634, both Important Cultural Properties, so the south gate is one of three national structures on the same grounds. Jimokuji is known popularly as Jimokuji Kannon, its principal image kept as a hidden Buddha. The temple sits in central Ama with parking on site, an easy stop for travelers exploring the historic temples around Nagoya.