Teishoji Temple Main Hall

Teishoji Main Hall: A Temple Built by Japan's First Modern Actress

Tucked into a wooded hillside above the Kiso River in Kakamigahara City, Gifu Prefecture, the Main Hall of Teishoji Temple is a wholly singular work of Showa-era religious architecture. It was commissioned in 1933 by Kawakami Sadayakko, the woman widely recognized as Japan's first modern actress, who used her own private fortune to raise this temple as a personal act of faith. The result is a building that bridges traditional Japanese carpentry, modern reinforced-concrete engineering, and the deeply personal life story of a remarkable performer who once enchanted Paris and Chicago. Today the hall is recognized as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan, and pilgrims, theatre-lovers, and travellers seeking something truly off the beaten path continue to make their way to its quiet courtyard.

The Woman Who Built the Temple

To understand the Main Hall, it helps first to know its founder. Kawakami Sadayakko (1871-1946) was born in Tokyo's Nihonbashi district and, after her family's fortunes faltered, was apprenticed as a young girl to a geisha house. Gifted, articulate, and astonishingly beautiful, she rose to become the most celebrated geisha in Tokyo, counting Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi among her patrons. Her marriage to the actor and theatre reformer Kawakami Otojirō took her to a stage that no Japanese woman had stood on before in modern times.

In 1899 she travelled with her husband's troupe to the United States, and almost by accident she found herself performing on stage in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York. The following year, the company was invited to the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, and there Sadayakko captivated an audience that included Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, and Claude Debussy. The French government awarded her the decoration of Officier d'Académie. By the time she returned to Japan she had become a phenomenon, and at home she went on to found a training school for actresses, paving the way for every Japanese stage and screen actress who came after her.

From childhood, Sadayakko had been a devout believer in Fudō Myōō (the Buddhist deity Acala), whom she credited with healing her foster mother's grave illness when she was twelve years old. After her husband's death and her own retirement from the stage, she devoted her later years to her faith — and at the age of 62, she set about building a temple dedicated to the deity who had watched over her life.

A Personal Fortune Poured into Sacred Architecture

The site Sadayakko chose lies along a particularly scenic stretch of the Kiso River known in the Taisho period as the "Nihon Rhine" — a riverscape so reminiscent of Germany's Rhine Valley that the geographer Shiga Shigetaka had given it that name in 1913. Here she purchased a generous compound of roughly 6,000 tsubo (about 19,800 square metres) and committed an enormous sum of money — 356,000 yen, equivalent to several billion yen today — to building the temple precinct. She also raised a private villa, the Banshōen, just outside its gates so that she could live within sight of the temple she had founded.

The complete dedication ceremony was held on 28 October 1933. The temple was originally named Kongōzan Tōkōin Teishoji — the "Tōkōin" element being a quiet reference to Fukuzawa Momosuke, the electric-power industrialist and longtime companion of her later years (his given name shares the character for "peach" with the temple's name). After Sadayakko's death in 1946, the temple eventually came under the management of Naritasan in 1960 and was renamed Naritasan Teishoji, the name it carries today.

Why the Main Hall is a Registered Cultural Property

On 3 August 2006, the Main Hall was officially listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, together with several other buildings in the precinct including the priest's quarters, the study hall, and the gate. The designation recognizes the Main Hall as an unusually accomplished and historically meaningful example of pre-war religious architecture.

Three qualities in particular distinguish the building. First, its architectural authority: the design and construction were entrusted to Itō Heizaemon, the holder of a master-carpenter lineage that had served the Owari domain for some four hundred years. The hall was deliberately modelled on the Main Hall of Naritasan Shinshōji in Chiba (the building that survives today as Shinshōji's Shakadō), giving it a direct stylistic link to one of the most important Fudō Myōō temples in eastern Japan.

Second, its inventive technology: the wooden hall sits on a fully reinforced-concrete platform with an elevated stage-like base, a strikingly modern engineering decision for a 1930s religious building. Above this concrete substructure rises a hall built entirely of cypress (hinoki) in classical Japanese carpentry — an honest fusion of contemporary structural science and traditional craft.

Third, its sculpted narrative: the side and rear walls are decorated with eight carved relief panels (dōhame) by the celebrated craftsman Kaneko Mitsukiyo, depicting the founder's own miraculous experiences of divine protection. There is no other temple in Japan whose exterior tells the personal life of its patroness in this way.

Architectural Highlights

The Main Hall is a single-storey wooden building with a copper-shingled roof, covering an area of 251 square metres. Its plan is a classic five-bay hall (hōgodō) with the central bay broader than the others on both the long and short axes. The roof is in the irimoya hipped-and-gabled style, with a chidori-hafu (triangular dormer gable) above the front face and a karahafu (cusped flowing gable) over the kōhai (worshipper's porch). The roof is finished in copper sheet laid in a ribbed kawarabō pattern. From the structural framing through to the eaves, the carpentry follows orthodox temple conventions without compromise.

What gives the hall its drama is the combination of this orthodox upper structure with the elevated reinforced-concrete podium below. Approached from the courtyard, the hall stands proudly raised, its broad front steps drawing the eye upward to the carved porch and the interior beyond. Inside, the principal image of Fudō Myōō was carved by the sculptor Ogawa Hanjirō; the flame nimbus surrounding the deity has been shaped into a soft circle, said to express a wish that human hearts would become gentle and that relationships in the world would settle into harmony.

Walking around the building's exterior is one of the hall's most distinctive pleasures. The eight relief panels mounted along the side and rear walls form a visual biography of Sadayakko's encounters with Fudō Myōō. Among the scenes are the recovery of her foster mother from serious illness, and the safe completion of the difficult Ōi Dam construction project on the Kiso River — an enterprise undertaken by Fukuzawa Momosuke. The original sketches for these carvings are preserved in the temple's Sadayakko Engiki-kan (Sadayakko Memorial Hall) in the precinct.

Visiting the Temple

The temple is open to visitors year-round, generally between 9:00 and 15:00. There is no admission charge for the precinct itself, though a separate fee applies to enter the Sadayakko Memorial Hall, where the actress's stage costumes, scripts, personal possessions, and a striking bronze portrait bust of Sadayakko and her husband (sculpted by L. Bernstamm in the early 20th century) are on display. Many visitors come to pray for success in the performing arts, and the temple is widely associated with blessings for actors, dancers, musicians, and anyone pursuing creative work.

Please note that the bell tower (shōrō), one of the registered cultural properties in the precinct, was lost to fire in February 2024. The Main Hall and most other historic buildings were unaffected.

From central Tokyo, the most practical route is the Tōkaidō Shinkansen to Nagoya, then the Meitetsu line from Meitetsu Nagoya Station to Shin-Unuma Station (around 30 minutes by limited express). From Shin-Unuma it is roughly a 10-minute taxi ride to the temple, or a short ride on the Kakamigahara Fureai community bus, which stops at "Teishoji-mae" right by the entrance. From JR Gifu Station, JR Unuma Station is about 25 minutes away, with onward transfer to taxi or bus.

What to See in the Surrounding Area

The temple sits in one of the most rewarding cultural landscapes of central Japan. A short distance away across the Kiso River stands Inuyama Castle, one of only twelve castles in Japan to retain its original main keep and one of five designated as a National Treasure. Its compact, cliff-top tower offers sweeping views of the same river that drew Sadayakko to this setting.

Just outside the temple gate is the former Banshōen, Sadayakko's private villa, today operating as the Geihinkan Sakurahills Kawakami Bessō. Visits are arranged by reservation. For those wishing to follow Sadayakko's story further, Bunka no Michi Futabakan in Nagoya — the reconstructed "Futaba Palace" residence she shared with Fukuzawa Momosuke — is an essential complement to a visit here. The forested hillside immediately behind the temple, known as Nihon Line Unuma no Mori, offers gentle walking trails and spectacular seasonal colour. The riverside gorge of the Nihon Rhine itself, best appreciated from one of the boat tours that depart from Inuyama, ties the entire landscape together.