Ishiteji Temple Bell Tower

The Bell Tower of Ishite-ji

An ink inscription brushed onto one of the tower's pillars records the year as 1333, placing its construction in the early Muromachi period. The structure stands just south of the three-storied pagoda at Ishite-ji, the fifty-first temple on the Shikoku pilgrimage circuit, in the Ishite district of Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture. It is a two-tiered bell tower of the hakama-goshi type, its lower story wrapped in a flared, boarded skirt that gives the form its name. (Hakama are the wide pleated trousers of traditional dress, and the splayed base is thought to echo their shape.)

The bell hanging in the upper chamber is older than the tower around it. Cast in bronze and inscribed with the date 1251, it is the oldest dated bronze bell in Ehime Prefecture, and it carries its own Important Cultural Property status. A thirteenth-century bell within a fourteenth-century frame is the kind of detail that rewards a deliberate stop rather than a passing glance.

Why It Is Designated

Ishite-ji holds one of the densest collections of designated architecture anywhere on the pilgrimage route. Its Niomon gate is a National Treasure. The main hall, the three-storied pagoda, the Goma-do, the Kariteimo-ten-do, a stone five-ring pagoda, and this bell tower are all Important Cultural Properties. The bell tower received that designation on 27 May 1907, and a handful of sources describe the building as a reconstruction, which would imply an earlier tower on the same spot.

The architecture follows the wayo, or Japanese, style. Above the skirted base, triple-stepped bracket complexes called mitesaki carry an encircling balcony and its assembled balustrade, and the same bracketing supports the eaves of the upper roof. Short intercolumnar struts known as kentozuka sit between the bracket units. The roof is irimoya, a hipped-and-gabled form finished in layered cypress bark rather than tile, with eaves doubled in the manner called futanoki. For a building of this modest footprint the bracketing is remarkably fine, and assessors have long praised the tower for the balance and quiet confidence of its proportions.

What to Notice on a Visit

Seen from below, the tower reads first as a solid, slightly tapering base topped by something far lighter. That contrast is the heart of its design. The boarded skirt presses the building into the ground while the open upper chamber, with its railed gallery and stacked brackets catching the afternoon light, seems to lift away from it. Walk a slow circle around the base and the bracket arms reveal themselves from each angle, every tier stepping outward to carry the weight of the eaves above.

Look up into the chamber and the bell is visible, its bronze darkened with age. The metal was cast more than eighty years before the timber that now shelters it. Few bell towers let a visitor read this kind of layered chronology in a single upward glance.

The temple's name carries a story that travelers rarely meet elsewhere. Ishite means "stone hand." A legend bound up with the origins of the Shikoku pilgrimage tells of Emon Saburo, a hard-hearted man who repented and wished to be reborn to do good. A child later born into the local Kono clan was said to have been found clutching a stone marked with his name. The temple, once called Anyo-ji, took the name Ishite-ji from the tale.

Around Ishite-ji and Getting There

Ishite-ji sits about a kilometre east of Dogo Onsen, one of Japan's oldest hot-spring districts and a destination in its own right. The covered approach to the temple is lined with shops in the old nakamise style, and the precinct draws a steady mix of pilgrims, local worshippers, and sightseers through the year. The temple earned a star in the Michelin Green Guide Japon. Beyond the bell tower, the grounds hold the National Treasure gate, a treasure hall, a long mantra tunnel cut through rock, and a towering statue of Kobo Daishi.

Most visitors reach the temple on foot, by city bus, or by the Iyotetsu tram toward Dogo, folding it into a wider day around the onsen quarter. The bell tower stands in the open precinct and can be viewed whenever the grounds are accessible. The bell is not rung for casual visitors, so the pleasure here is in looking rather than listening.