Nagata Shrine Hachimansha

One Square Metre, Fully Registered

Nagata Shrine Hachimansha (長田神社八幡社, also written Nagata-jinja Hachiman-sha) is a small subsidiary shrine building at Nagatacho in Nagata Ward, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture. It was built in 1928 and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 14 February 2002.

Its recorded building area is 1.0 square metre.

The measurements in the register are given in the old carpenter's units. The body is 2 shaku 7 sun across the front, roughly 82 centimetres, and 2 shaku 2 sun deep, roughly 67 centimetres, with a projecting canopy of 1 shaku 8 sun, about 55 centimetres. A grown adult could put both arms around it. Everything you would expect of a full-sized shrine hall is present anyway: a three-course plinth of dressed stone, a single-bay nagare-zukuri roof with its long asymmetrical sweep down over the front, copper sheeting above, closely spaced single-layer rafters beneath the eaves, and vermilion on all the woodwork.

Inside the Openwork Fence

The Hachimansha stands within the sukibei, the slatted fence that encloses the innermost precinct, immediately west of the main hall. Directly opposite it, east of the main hall, stands the Amaterasusha, built to the same dimensions and the same specification.

The two of them are not incidental. Agency for Cultural Affairs records describe the pair as principal elements composing the sacred space inside the fence, which is a precise way of saying that the main hall does not stand alone. It is flanked. Nagata Shrine's principal deity is Kotoshironushi, and the two deities honoured within the inner enclosure are said to be Amaterasu Omikami to the east and Emperor Ojin, worshipped as Hachiman, to the west.

Because the fence encloses them, visitors normally see the Hachimansha from outside it. That is the point of a sukibei: the slats let you look through without letting you in. Stand at the right angle on a bright morning and the vermilion of the small hall reads clearly between the uprights.

What Nagare-zukuri Means Here

Nagare-zukuri is the commonest form for a Japanese shrine hall. The gable roof is asymmetrical: the front slope continues past the wall line and runs on downward to shelter the approach, so the building appears to lean forward slightly. Ikkensha means the front measures one bay between pillars. At this scale the whole form becomes something like a scale model built at full carpentry standard, which is close to what the register is honouring when it cites the criterion of being a model of design.

The Fire of 1924 and What Followed

Nagata Shrine is an ancient foundation. It appears in the Engishiki register of shrines as a myojin taisha, held the rank of kanpei chusha under the modern system, and is counted with Ikuta and Minatogawa among Kobe's principal shrines. The precinct's history is long. Its buildings are not.

The shrine halls of 1661 burned in January 1924 after an electrical fault. Reconstruction was completed in 1928, and that campaign produced almost everything now standing inside the fence, the Hachimansha included. The shrine's own account describes the complex as the first to be executed throughout in vermilion over a lacquer ground with polychrome detailing and copper roofing, and names Kagawa Sadataro as the designer of the main hall. Repainting and re-lacquering were carried out between 1961 and 1963, and roofs were re-covered again around 1980.

Kobe's shrines fared badly in the air raids of 1945. Nagata Shrine's account records it as the only large shrine complex in the city to come through the war unburned. It took damage in the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of January 1995, when Nagata Ward suffered heavily from fire, and the precinct served as an emergency shelter from the day of the quake.

Visiting

Entry to the precinct is free and there is no ticket for the Hachimansha, since it is not entered by anyone but priests. Approach the main hall, then look to the left along the fence line. Sources give the gate hours as 05:00 to 18:00 from April to September and 06:00 to 18:00 from October to March, with the office and amulet counter keeping shorter daytime hours, so a weekday morning gives the quietest look at the inner enclosure.

Photography from the public areas of the precinct is not restricted in any notice, though pointing a lens through the fence during a rite would be poor form. Avoid 1 January to 3 January entirely unless crowds are the attraction: the shrine draws well over a million visitors across the New Year period.

Other things worth finding while you are there. A portable shrine in black lacquer with gilt-bronze fittings, designated an Important Cultural Property in 1969, is traditionally said to have been dedicated by Minamoto no Yoritomo, though a repair tablet of 1457 has also prompted an attribution to Ashikaga Takauji. A stone lantern bearing an inscription of 1286 is designated by the prefecture. Two camphor trees are Kobe city natural monuments, and behind the main hall the Kusunomiya Inari shrine draws people praying for recovery from illness.

The single best day to come is 3 February. The shrine's kishiki tsuina-shiki, designated an important intangible folk cultural property by Hyogo Prefecture in 1970, sends seven demons through the precinct with torches and blades, acting on behalf of the deities to sweep the coming year clean. Some of the masks are thought to date from the Muromachi period.

Getting There

From Nagata (Nagata-jinja-mae) Station on the Kobe Municipal Subway, or Kosoku-Nagata Station on the Kobe Rapid Transit line, walk north through the Nagata-jinja-mae shopping arcade for about five minutes. City bus routes 3 and 4 from JR Kobe and Hyogo stations and route 17 from JR Shin-Nagata stop at Nagata-jinja-mae, right at the approach.