Saimyoji Temple Three-Story Pagoda

A Pagoda Dated by Its Own Timbers

Saimyoji Three-Storied Pagoda (西明寺三重塔, also written Saimyō-ji Sanjū-no-tō) is a Muromachi-period pagoda in the precincts of Saimyoji temple at Mashiko, Haga District, Tochigi Prefecture, dated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs to 1537 and protected as a national Important Cultural Property since its designation on 1 August 1908.

The structure is three bays square at every level, and the bays contract as the building climbs: 3.118 metres across at the first storey, 2.778 at the second, 2.332 at the third. Total height to the tip of the bronze finial is recorded by the town of Mashiko at 17.932 metres. The taper is steep enough to read from the ground, and it does most of the work in holding the silhouette together, because the eaves project a long way and the roof slopes curve harder than a visitor expects.

Two inscriptions anchor the chronology. An ink note on the central pillar gives Tenbun 6 (1537). The fukubachi, the inverted-bowl member at the base of the finial, carries an engraved line dating it to the second month of Tenbun 7 (1538). Mashiko's municipal record adds a third figure, describing the pagoda as finished around Tenbun 12 (1543) under Mashiko Iemune, lord of Takadate castle. Read together, the three dates suggest a build that ran over several seasons rather than a single year, with the frame raised first and the metalwork following.

The roof covering is worth a second glance. Rather than the tile or bark one might expect, the surface is copper sheet worked to imitate a battened board roof, an approach uncommon among Japanese pagodas of any period.

Why the Pagoda Was Designated

Saimyoji's pagoda was among the earliest wave of buildings taken into national protection, listed in 1908 under the Meiji-era law for the preservation of shrines and temples and carried over as an Important Cultural Property when the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties took effect in 1950. Some local publications cite the 1950 date for that reason; both refer to the same building and the same continuous protection.

What sets it apart is that its three storeys are not built in one manner. The first level follows wayō, the older Japanese temple idiom, with closely spaced rafters and Japanese-style corner rafters. The second is setchūyō, a blend. The third turns to karayō, the Chinese-derived style associated with Zen architecture, where the rafters splay outward in a fan. Tail rafters appear on the lower two storeys and fan rafters on the upper two, so the vocabulary shifts as the eye travels upward.

Layering styles this way was not a compromise. By the sixteenth century carpenters in the eastern provinces worked with a mixed grammar, and a patron commissioning a pagoda could ask for the dignity of the old manner at the base and the fashionable Chinese detailing above. Few surviving buildings show the sequence as legibly as this one.

The designation also covers an appended item: a single munafuda, or ridge tablet, the wooden board recording a building's construction that Japanese carpenters customarily fixed inside the roof frame. Such tablets are listed under the heading tsuketari, meaning they are protected as part of the property even though they are not the building itself.

Saimyoji's pagoda is counted among the oldest surviving pagodas in the Kanto region and the provinces north of it, a distinction that owes something to luck. The temple burned more than once, in 1127 and again in 1361 by its own chronology, and what stands today postdates both.

Seeing It on the Hillside

Saimyoji occupies the southern flank of Dokkosan, a wooded hill above the pottery town of Mashiko, and the pagoda sits near the main hall rather than on an axis of its own. Walk in through the thatched two-storey gate and it appears off to the side, framed by trees, at a distance short enough that the bracketing on the third storey stays readable.

Entry to the grounds is free. The temple asks 300 yen from anyone wishing to enter the inner sanctum of the main hall, where the Kamakura-period Kannon sculptures are kept. Sutra-copy and seal reception runs 8:00 to 17:00 from April through October and shorter hours in winter; the temple's own site and the Bando pilgrimage association list slightly different winter closing times, so a phone call ahead is sensible in the cold months.

Photography of the exterior is not restricted, and the best angle is from slightly downhill, where the three roofs stack without overlapping.

Getting here takes planning. The nearest station is Mashiko on the Moka Railway, reached via Shimodate on the JR Mito Line, and there is no bus from the station forecourt to the temple, so most visitors drive or take a taxi for the final stretch. By car it is roughly 30 minutes from the Moka or Sakuragawa-Chikusei interchanges. Parking sits in front of the gate.

Saimyoji is the twentieth station of the Bando Sanjusankasho, a thirty-three-temple Kannon pilgrimage circuit through the eastern provinces, so on weekends you will share the path with pilgrims in white. The Enmado hall nearby holds a seated figure of Enma, judge of the dead, whose expression has earned him the nickname the Laughing Enma. A rest house on the grounds serves hand-cut soba in limited daily portions.