Nageshi

What nageshi are

A nageshi is a horizontal member fixed across the outer face of the columns, tying them together and drawing a level line round the wall.

Shrine records name it alongside the tie beams that bind the frame. The subsidiary Itsukushima Shrine at Kasuga in Oita Prefecture, from the Meiji period, is described as standing on a cut-stone base with round columns bound by this trim and by tie beams, with boat-shaped brackets and double rows of closely spaced Taruki. The neighbouring Yasaka Shrine, from the later Edo period, is described in the same words.

The two members differ in how they work. A tie beam passes through the columns; this one is fixed to their outer surface. Naming both records that two distinct kinds of horizontal member are present.

The offering hall at the same shrine, built in 1905, is described as having round columns bound by this trim together with head-beams and a bearing plate, three-block brackets, struts carrying the ridge and purlins at the gable, and a boarded interior of one room under a Gō-tenjō.

A marker of formality

In houses the part signals the standing of a room. Formal reception architecture carries it round the walls above the openings, working with the Tokonoma and its shelving to make an ordered composition.

Houses in Sukiya-zukuri usually leave it out. Omitting the markers of rank is the point of that manner, and a room with bark-edged posts but no trim above the openings reads immediately as belonging to it rather than to the formal tradition.

When visiting, look up at the wall of a reception room. A horizontal member running above the openings and continuing round the room is this part. Within one house, rooms with it and rooms without are usually ranked differently.