Yoganji Temple Audience Hall

Three rooms in a row for receiving the head of Hongwanji

Yoganji Temple Audience Hall (陽願寺対面所, Yōganji Taimensho) is the reception wing extending west from the priests' quarters at Yoganji in Honmachi, Echizen City, Fukui Prefecture; built in the early Meiji era and remodeled in 1911, it was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 17 August 2020. It is a single-storey timber building with a tiled gabled roof running east to west, white plaster walls framed by exposed posts, and a building area of 182 square metres.

A taimensho is the room where an honored visitor and the host formally meet. At Yoganji the visitor in mind was the head of Nishi Hongwanji, the mother temple in Kyoto. The temple's survey concludes the wing was built for the head's overnight stays and rests on journeys to Fukui, and for the ceremonies at which he met the priests and followers of Echizen.

The national database dates the building to the early Meiji era, between 1868 and 1882, with remodeling in 1911. The temple's survey argues construction began in the late Edo period with the main hall and priests' quarters, noting hand-forged nails in the roof framing.

Why it was registered: a reception wing of high standing

The Yoganji Audience Hall was registered under the criterion of serving as a model of design. The Agency's description lists three rooms in a line from the east: a 20-mat hall, a 16-mat messengers' room and the 16-mat audience room, whose west wall holds an alcove and shelves. A tatami-floored veranda one bay wide runs along the south of the last two rooms, and the transoms are made of bamboo nodes. It sums up the wing as a reception facility of high formality.

The sequence of rooms is the ceremony in plan. A guest entering from the priests' quarters waited in the hall, passed through the messengers' room and came forward to the head of Hongwanji seated in the innermost room. Rank rises as you go deeper, ending at the west wall with a decorative alcove two bays wide and staggered shelves one bay wide. The temple's survey describes this arrangement as a recreation of the Ko-no-ma, the audience hall at Nishi Hongwanji.

Ceilings are of the saruboo and batten types. The hall and messengers' room are separated by a solid wall panel above the lintels, but between the messengers' room and the audience room a bamboo-node transom lets you see through to the ceiling beyond. The temple's survey treats that bamboo transom as a later addition.

What to look for: the great alcove, the bamboo transom and the room behind

Stand at the hall end and look west: through the messengers' room the alcove of the audience room sits dead center. The rooms line up so that your eye is drawn to it, and you feel from where you stand that this was a space built for ritual.

Behind the audience room to the west is a small anteroom of six mats. The Agency's description calls it the Matsu-no-ma, the pine room; the temple today calls it Take-no-ma, the bamboo room, and describes a six-mat room and four-mat antechamber in the relaxed sukiya manner, with lintel rails of cedar left with its bark-edge surface, facing a tiny courtyard garden. On the Edo-period plan this space was a one-bay tatami corridor; the temple believes it was remodeled and extended between the 1902 completion and the 650th memorial for Shinran around 1911. Just behind the formal audience room, an informal teahouse-style room is tucked away.

On the old plan, a courtyard separated the audience hall from the priests' quarters, linked by one-bay corridors at each end. The east wall of the hall still has openings at both ends, a trace of that arrangement.

Visiting the Yoganji Audience Hall

You can see inside the Yoganji Audience Hall on the temple's paid visits, held on weekends and holidays from April through December. The bamboo room is also on the reserved special visit. You cannot enter while a memorial service is being held there.

The hall also serves as a venue for temple events, so what you can see varies by day. Check the news page on the temple's website before you go.