Hisashi

What hisashi means

A hisashi is a small roof projecting over an outer wall, doorway or window. It keeps rain off walls and fittings and softens the sun. Hoods over entrances, hoods over windows and drip hoods set partway up storehouse walls all take the name.

In shrine and temple architecture the word has a second sense: the lower-roofed zone added around the central core, the moya, together with the space beneath it. Building plans since antiquity are described in terms of moya and hisashi.

Distinguish it from related terms. A Geya is a lean-to roof set against the main wall covering rooms or an earth floor, deeper than a hisashi and enclosing space beneath. A Mokoshi is a pent roof wrapped around the main body of a Buddhist hall or pagoda. A Kōhai is the canopy projecting from the front of a shrine or temple for worshippers, carried on posts. Records sometimes combine terms, as geya-bisashi.

Reading the records and the building

Records note buildings with a hisashi. The Sangyorō at Kajikaen in Ome, Tokyo, a sukiya reception building, has an open entrance porch under a hisashi on its north side. At the Muryōshian of the Itoki shop in Higashiyama, Kyoto, the roof combines several gables, with a hisashi over the tea room. The rice storehouse of the Okuno family in Hirakata, Osaka, has its entrance hood plastered right up under the eaves and drip hoods on the gable. Storehouse hoods are often sealed in plaster against fire.

Among shrines, the structure line for the main sanctuary of Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, a National Treasure, reads a three-bay front canopy with hisashi on both sides and the back, showing a core surrounded by canopy and hisashi. Articles should make clear from context whether a small hood over an opening or the zone around the core is meant.