Rengyo-Ji Temple Gate and Side Wall

Renkyoji Temple Gate and Side Walls

The gate that greets visitors at Renkyo-ji sits on the approach path facing the main hall. It is a shikyakumon, a four-legged gate in which two main pillars are braced front and back by four subsidiary posts. Renkyo-ji itself, a Shinshu Takada-ha temple, took its present name in the Genna era (1615-1624) and moved to this hill in 1716.

The gate was built in 1812, the ninth year of the Bunka era, and carries a gabled roof of formal hongawara tile. On either side a plastered wall turns at a right angle and continues along the approach, screening the inner precinct. The walls run about twenty-three metres in all.

Registered for Its Carving

The gate and its flanking walls were registered on 2 May 2017 for their part in the historic landscape of the hill. Where the nearby kuri is valued for plainness, the gate is valued for ornament.

The main pillars are round columns; the bracing posts are square with chamfered edges. At the gable a taiheizuka strut shaped like a vase, framed by curved oigata brackets, carries the ridge beam. The structural timbers are heavy, and the surfaces are worked with carving that gives the gate a richness unusual for a rural parish. It is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

What to Look For

This is the point where a visitor crosses from the ordinary road into temple ground, and the builders treated the crossing as an event. Pause beneath the gate and look up into the gable, at the vase-strut and its brackets, the carved ends of the beams, the close grain of aged timber.

The plastered side walls, white against the trees, frame the climb toward the main hall. The gate reads best in the low light of morning, when the carving throws shadow and the relief stands out.