Hokora

What a hokora is

A hokora is a small shrine that houses a deity or an image. It stands within an estate or beside a road, and nobody goes inside it. Most reproduce the form of a shrine hall at small scale, and many are cut in stone.

The Takigawa Residence shrine in Aichi Prefecture, dated 1525 and moved in 1926, is described as standing on a base of natural stones at the west end of the plot, its base, niche and roof each cut from a single block, a Buddhist image carved inside the niche, a Yosemune-zukuri roof curving in the Teri-mukuri manner with a Noki-karahafu at the front, and doors of stone hinged to open outward. It is said to enshrine the Yakushi Nyorai of Horaiji, and the entry calls it indispensable to the estate.

That entry sets out the anatomy of a stone shrine: base, niche and roof in three blocks, the niche holding the image, the roof copying timber forms.

It is counted as one structure in the Insū of a registered property. However small the building, it is protected as part of the estate.

Not a memorial hall

Japanese has a longer word, sharing the same first character, for a hall where ancestors are commemorated. Eishoji in Kanagawa Prefecture, founded in 1643, is recorded as an Important Cultural Property with a memorial hall and its gate west of the main hall, the hall three bays square under a Hōgyō-zukuri roof and decorated inside and out in lacquer and colour.

A memorial hall is a building people enter to pray; the small shrine is worshipped from outside. The two differ in scale and use despite the shared character, and records keep them apart.

On site, judge by size. A structure too small to enter, with doors at the front and an image or sacred object inside, is the small shrine.