Shogyoji Temple Bell Tower

A Building of Seven and a Half Square Metres, With Its Paperwork Intact

Shōgyōji Bell Tower (正行寺鐘楼, also written Shogyo-ji Shōrō) is a timber belfry in Baikō, Akkeshi Town, Akkeshi District, Hokkaido, built in 1908 and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties (buildings) on 7 August 2009. It covers just 7.5 square metres: a single-bay, open-sided shōrō with no walls at all.

For a structure this small, the documentation is remarkable. The temple preserves a construction record book, and according to it, in the first days of October 1908 a parishioner representative named Ueda Kanbē offered to fund the belfry. Four or five carpenters worked on it around the clock, and it was finished within the same month.

The building confirms its own paperwork. An inscription cut into the inner face of the kōryō beam records the completion of the bell tower on an auspicious day in the tenth month of Meiji 41, naming Ueda Kanbē as the donor. Buildings where a written record and a carved inscription agree on who, when and why are less common than one might assume, and scale has nothing to do with it.

Splayed Posts and a Bracketed Eave

An open-sided belfry has no walls; four posts alone carry the roof. Bells need the sound to escape, so this form is standard. Shōgyōji's belfry is roofed in irimoya-zukuri, the hipped-and-gabled form, and all of that weight lands on four square posts.

Those four posts lean slightly inward. The technique is called shihō-korobi, splayed on all four sides, and setting the posts like the legs of a stepladder gives the frame resistance to lateral force. The posts themselves are chamfered in the karado-mentori manner, with a fine bevel cut along each arris.

Four Levels of Tie-Beams

The posts are locked together at four heights: ashigatame-nuki near the ground, uchinori-nuki at mid-height, kashira-nuki at the top, and a daiwa plate above that. Horizontal members threaded through at staggered levels weave the four posts into something closer to a basket than a row of sticks. That is why a wall-less building stays standing in a place with this much wind.

Looking Up

Above the posts sit mitsudo-gumi bracket sets, with kaerumata struts in the intervals between them. A kaerumata is structural, transferring load from above, but its outline is usually treated as an opportunity for shape, and reading that outline tells you a good deal about the period. The rafters are single-tier and widely spaced, and a coffered ceiling is fitted overhead. All of this workmanship, in a shelter with no walls.

Three Roofs, Two Bells

The roof is copper sheet today, but when the belfry was new it was clad in split shingles of Japanese yew. Akkeshi Town's records note repairs in 1923 and again in 2008, which produced the present form. The difficulty of keeping a wooden roof serviceable in this climate is written directly into the building's maintenance history.

The bell has a history of its own. The original was brought from Takaoka in Etchū Province, present-day Toyama Prefecture, in late March 1908. Takaoka has been a metal-casting town since the Edo period. That bell was surrendered for metal during the Second World War, and the one hanging in the tower now was cast in 1957. The building survived; its contents did not. Among Japanese belfries, that is a common enough story.

The reason for registration sits in this same context. The criterion applied was contribution to the historical landscape. Just to the southeast stands Shōgyōji Main Hall, an Important Cultural Property designated in 1992. That hall was built in 1799 in what is now Itoigawa, Niigata Prefecture, as the main hall of a temple called Manchōji; the Akkeshi congregation bought it, took it apart, shipped it north and reassembled it during the Meiji era. The main hall's arrival and the belfry's construction in 1908 belong to the same moment, and Akkeshi Town presents the belfry as evidence of the temple compound as it looked when it was first laid out. The registration number is 01-0103.

Visiting

Shōgyōji belongs to the Ōtani branch of Jōdo Shinshū. It traces its founding to 1879, when a priest named Asahi Emyō was sent from the Sapporo branch temple to open a preaching station at Akkeshi; the name Shōgyōji was granted in 1883. The belfry stands northwest of the north-facing main hall, on a north-south axis. Knowing that, you will spot it as soon as you enter the precinct.

Access is by bus from Akkeshi Station on the JR Hanasaki Line, alighting at Sakuradōri and walking three minutes. By car it is about three kilometres from the station. Akkeshi is an oyster port, so a half day allows for the roadside station and Kakishima Benten Shrine as well.

The precinct is temple property. The belfry stands outdoors and can be seen from within the grounds, but where you may walk and whether you may photograph are for the temple to say. The main hall, as an Important Cultural Property, requires separate arrangements if you wish to see the interior.