Shizutani Shrine (Former Shizutani School Horetsu Shrine)

A founder honoured one terrace below his teacher

Shizutani Shrine (Former Shizutani School Horetsu Shrine) is a group of eight structures at Shizutani in Bizen City, Okayama Prefecture, erected in 1686 and designated an Important Cultural Property on 4 July 1938. It stands on the eastern side of the school precinct and enshrines Ikeda Mitsumasa, the lord of the Okayama domain who founded the school in 1670.

The buildings began under a different name. Mitsumasa's posthumous title was Horetsu, and the hall raised to hold his spirit and his likeness was called Horetsushi after it. People on the grounds also knew it as the east hall, in contrast to the west hall on the higher ground beside it. The Okayama Prefecture Shrine Agency records that in 1875 Mitsumasa's grandfather Terumasa and his father Toshitaka were enshrined here alongside him, that the hall took the name Shizutani Shrine at that point, and that it was ranked as a prefectural shrine in the same year.

What sits inside is a gilt bronze seated figure of Mitsumasa. Bizen City's chronology dates the casting to 1704 and its installation to 1707, the year Tsuda Nagatada, the retainer who built the school, died. Cultural Heritage Online describes the figure in court dress with a crown, a ceremonial baton held in the right hand, the left hand resting on a sword at the hip, chased patterns worked into the robe, and a face with the eyes narrowed and the corners of the mouth turned up.

Eight structures under one register number

The designation covers the main hall, the offering hall, the worship hall, the middle gate, a storehouse, the stone stairway, the plastered enclosing wall and a stone post for tethering offering animals. All eight carry the same register number and the same date of 1686, and the listed owner throughout is Shizutani Shrine itself.

The interest of Shizutani Shrine lies in what it does not do. Bizen City's account of the grounds is explicit: the compound sits a step lower than the Confucian shrine to the west, out of respect for Confucius, and every building in it was deliberately made plainer and smaller than its counterpart uphill. The plan is otherwise a close echo. The Confucian compound and this one both have a gate on the axis, a wall running right around, a stair of cut stone and a tethering post, and the register even applies the same local names to the parts, calling the worship hall the inner court and the offering hall the steps.

Reading the two groups side by side is the quickest way to understand how the school ordered its world. The teacher above, the founder below, and the difference expressed in the height of a terrace and the size of a roof rather than in words.

Details worth stopping for

The stairway has 13 steps, counted in the register without its balustrade. The Confucian shrine on the higher terrace is reached by 19. The difference is small and entirely deliberate.

The main hall is three bays square with an Irimoya-zukuri roof and Hongawarabuki in Bizen ware tiles. The Okayama Prefecture Shrine Agency describes the interior as having a Saobuchi-tenjō ceiling and a wiped board floor, with the sacred seat divided into three parts, one for each of the men enshrined. Behind it, the worship hall, the offering hall and the main hall line up front to back on the axis, with the storehouse and the tethering post set in the western part of the yard.

Look up at the eaves. The round tiles carry the Ikeda family crest, and the sources give it two names: Bizen City calls it the swallowtail butterfly crest, the shrine agency the resting butterfly. Either way it is a family mark rather than a religious one, and finding it repeated along the eave line of a designated shrine is a reminder that this began as a memorial hall for a particular man.

The plastered wall runs 92.7 metres from either side of the gate and closes around all four faces, tiled along its top in the same Bizen ware as the roofs. The middle gate is a four-legged gate under a Kirizuma-zukuri roof. The storehouse is Dozo-zukuri, a compact 3.5 metres by 2.5 metres, and its thick plastered walls were built for fire as much as for storage.

Immediately east of Shizutani Shrine is Tsubakiyama, the mound of camellias where a lock of Mitsumasa's hair and his nail clippings were interred. It is not part of this designation, but its position explains the layout: the man is buried at the eastern end, honoured in the middle, and the teaching he paid for occupies the ground to the west.

Seeing Shizutani Shrine

Shizutani Shrine (Former Shizutani School Horetsu Shrine) stands inside the paying area of the historic site, a short walk east of the lecture hall along the upper terrace. Nothing is ticketed separately; the site admission covers it.

The gates are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. throughout the year, with a closure from 29 to 31 December. Admission runs to 400 yen for adults, 200 yen for those aged 65 and over, and 100 yen for elementary and junior high school pupils, and there is no charge for parking. Visitors approach up the stone stairway and look at the halls from the yard; the interiors are not opened for ordinary admission, so the seated figure of Mitsumasa is not on view. Photography of the buildings is permitted. Food and drink must stay packed away inside the precinct, and pets cannot be brought in, with assistance dogs handled individually on enquiry.

Trains on the Sanyo Line reach Yoshinaga Station from Okayama in a little over half an hour, and a city bus covers the remaining distance in about ten minutes; a taxi takes eight. From Bizen-Katakami Station on the Ako Line a taxi needs about fifteen minutes, and drivers leaving the Sanyo Expressway at Bizen need about the same.

Twenty minutes is enough to walk the compound and read the eaves. Coming in late autumn puts colour behind the tiled roofs, which is when the eastern terrace looks its best.