Ebi-kōryō

What an ebi-kōryō is

An ebi-kōryō is a strongly curved Kōryō. The Japanese name compares its profile to the back of a prawn. Where an ordinary curved beam lifts gently, this one spans between points at different heights.

On shrine halls it links the front canopy to the body of the building. The subsidiary Yasaka Shrine at Kasuga in Oita Prefecture, from the later Edo period, is described as a single-bay Nagare-zukuri hall roofed in copper with a railed Kirime-en on three sides, Mitsudo-gumi brackets, double rows of closely spaced Taruki, a gable ornamented with Kaerumata alone, and the inner end of this beam carved with the same pattern as the head-beam projections.

That detail matters. Because the member curves so far, the treatment of its ends is where the carving goes.

Buddhist halls use it in the outer area. The inner sanctuary at Enkyoji in Hyogo Prefecture, built in 1673, is described as showing early modern taste in its diamond-patterned fascia between Wayō brackets, its Zenshūyō altar surround and canopy, and beams of this kind in the outer area.

Borrowed as a motif

The shape reaches townhouse fronts. The Kato Residence in Shiga Prefecture, from the late Edo period with work of 1940, is described as a former hemp merchant's house facing west onto the highway in the centre of a post town, its front showing the local townhouse character in brackets shaped like these beams and in wide latticed windows upstairs.

The wording says shaped like rather than naming the member itself: a bracket that imitates the form. A part from religious architecture has entered the vocabulary of the Machiya front.

On site, look up between the columns of the Kōhai and the building behind. A boldly bowed member running diagonally between them is this beam; an ordinary curved beam runs closer to level with a gentler lift.