Shōrinbō Kanetsukidō: Sixteen Square Metres, and a Full Bracket Vocabulary
The bell tower at Shōrinbō covers sixteen square metres. That is the footprint of a small bedroom. It is also the smallest of the eight structures the temple placed on Japan's national register of tangible cultural properties in 2011, and by some distance the densest in carpentry.
One bay by one bay, walls omitted entirely, raised on a podium of cut stone southeast of the main hall. It was built in 1744, in the middle of the Edo period, and repaired in 1994. The Agency for Cultural Affairs closes its entry with a verdict rather than a description: a bell tower of good quality from the early modern period.
Shōrinbō, in full Meikyōzan Shōrinbō, is a temple of the Hongan-ji branch of Jōdo Shinshū at 1280 Miyoshi-chō in the northern Hiroshima city of Miyoshi.
Reading the Columns
Start at the bottom and work up. There is little else to distract you, because a fukihanachi bell tower has no walls at all: the columns carry the roof, the bell hangs in the middle, and everything structural is on show.
Each column sits on a soban, a base block interposed between the stone and the timber. The columns themselves are round, and they are chimaki columns, gently narrowed towards the top and bottom so that the shaft swells at the middle. They do not stand plumb. They lean inward, a technique called uchikorobi that pulls the frame together and makes the tower read as taller than its single bay warrants. Horizontally the frame is locked by nuki, tie beams driven through the columns, and capped by a daiwa head plate running along the top.
Soban, chimaki, nuki, daiwa. Those four features are the ones architectural historians associate with zenshūyō, the Zen-temple manner imported from Song China in the thirteenth century. Shōrinbō is not a Zen temple. It is a Pure Land parish temple, and its carpenter in 1744 was doing what Edo carpenters routinely did: taking whichever details carried the weight he wanted, wherever they came from.
Above the daiwa sits a futatesaki bracket complex, stepping out twice from the column head, with odaruki tail rafters running back into the structure to lever the eaves outward. Brackets appear again at the centre of each bay, not only over the columns, and the panels between them are filled with kaerumata, the frog-leg struts whose lineage runs the other way, through the native wayō tradition. The eaves are futanoki shigedaruki: two tiers of rafters, closely spaced.
The roof is irimoya, hipped below and gabled above, tiled in sankawarabuki pantiles. The registration number is 34-0122, and the criterion applied was contribution to the historic character of the landscape.
Where to Stand
The bell tower is classified in the national database not as a building but under a separate heading for other constructed works. That is bureaucratic, and it is also accurate. Nobody occupies this structure. It exists to hold a bell above head height and to make the act of striking it visible from across the courtyard.
Which is the practical hint. Because there are no walls, the whole frame is legible from outside, and unlike the Kyakuden or the Onari-no-ma there is nothing here you need to be admitted to see. Come close enough to look up through the columns into the bracketing, then step back to the far side of the compound and watch the tower against the main hall roof behind it.
The relative positions repay attention. Shōrinbō's buildings have not moved since the Edo period, so the route from the gate past the main hall to the bell tower is the route people walked in 1744. The gate of 1665 is older than the bell tower by seventy-nine years; the sutra repository, eight years younger, stands to the northeast. Around them the 1934 guest buildings fill in the southwest corner.
Shōrinbō is a working temple with a resident priest, and visitors are on the grounds of somebody's parish. The bell is not a visitor attraction to be rung at will.
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Q&A
- Can I see the bell tower without an appointment?
- The tower stands in the open compound and has no walls, so its structure is visible from the courtyard. Shōrinbō is an active temple rather than a tourist site, so approach as you would any place of worship. The bell itself is used by the temple and is not there for visitors to strike.
- Why does a Pure Land temple have Zen-style details?
- Because by the eighteenth century the styles had stopped belonging to particular sects. Zenshūyō features such as base blocks, tapered columns, penetrating tie beams and head plates arrived with Zen architecture in the thirteenth century, but Edo-period carpenters drew on them freely regardless of the client's affiliation. The kaerumata struts on the same tower come from the older native wayō tradition, so both are present at once.
- What does fukihanachi mean?
- Open on all sides, with no walls between the columns. It is the common arrangement for bell towers, which need the sound to carry and the frame to be reachable. At Shōrinbō it also means the joinery is on permanent display.
- How old is it, and has it been altered?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to 1744, in the middle Edo period, with repairs recorded in 1994. Local tourism material describes it more loosely as mid-Edo, which agrees with the Agency's dating.
- What else is registered at Shōrinbō?
- Eight structures, all listed on 25 July 2011: the main hall of 1852, the gate of 1665, this bell tower of 1744, the sutra repository of 1752, the priests' quarters of 1801, the late Edo connecting corridor, and the Kyakuden and Onari-no-ma of 1934.
Basic Information
| Name | Shōrinbō Kanetsukidō (照林坊鐘撞堂) |
|---|---|
| Reading | Shōrinbō Kanetsukidō |
| Category | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure) |
| Registration number | 34-0122 (70th listing round) |
| Registered | 25 July 2011 |
| Registration criterion | Contributing to the historic character of the landscape |
| Quantity | 1 structure |
| Date | 1744 (middle Edo period), repaired 1994 |
| Structure | Timber, tiled roof, area 16 square metres; one bay by one bay, open on all sides, on a cut-stone podium; irimoya roof with sankawarabuki pantiles |
| Detailing | Base blocks under inward-leaning chimaki columns; nuki tie beams and daiwa head plate; two-stepped brackets with tail rafters, brackets at bay centres, kaerumata struts between; double closely-spaced rafters |
| Type | Religious / other constructed work |
| Address | 1280 Miyoshi-chō, Miyoshi City, Hiroshima Prefecture |
| Owner | Religious corporation Shōrinbō |
| Temple | Meikyōzan Shōrinbō, Jōdo Shinshū Hongan-ji branch |
| Access | Visible in the open compound. Active temple; enquiries 0824-62-2284 |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database (Agency for Cultural Affairs) — Shōrinbō Kanetsukidō
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008781
- National Cultural Properties Database — Shōrinbō Kyōzō (sutra repository)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008780
- Miyoshi Tourism Organisation — Meikyōzan Shōrinbō
- https://www.miyoshi-dmo.jp/play/shourimbo/
- Hiroshima Prefecture — List of Cultural Properties (PDF)
- https://www.pref.hiroshima.lg.jp/uploaded/attachment/591373.pdf
- Miyoshi City — Registered Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.miyoshi.hiroshima.jp/soshiki/49/3527.html
Last verified: 2026.07.18