Kotohira Shrine Okushoin

What Is the Kotohira Shrine Okushoin?

The Kotohira Shrine Okushoin (金刀比羅宮奥書院, Kotohira-gū Oku-shoin) is a shoin residence hall dated to 1717, in the mid Edo period, standing in the grounds of Kotohira Shrine in Kotohira Town, Kagawa Prefecture, and it was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1955.

The single-storey hall continues behind the Omoteshoin, under a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof of clay tiles with copper-sheeted eaves. The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists its plan: a six-mat room with an alcove, shelves and a built-in writing desk, followed by rooms of three, eight, ten, four and a half, three and six mats, two larger rooms of nineteen and ten mats with alcoves, an inner corridor, a veranda and an earth-floored eave space.

According to the shrine, the Okushoin was built as the residence of the bettō, the Buddhist superior who governed the mountain in the days of Konpira Daigongen. Where the Omoteshoin was the formal guest hall, the Kotohira Shrine Okushoin was the superior's own house.

Dating the Kotohira Shrine Okushoin, and Why It Is Designated

Two dates circulate. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives 1717 and describes the building as late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. The shrine, by contrast, says both shoin halls went up between 1658 and 1660. This page follows the Agency.

The Agency's note singles out the paintings as well as the building: wall and door paintings by Itō Jakuchū and Kishi Gantai. A modest residence of around 1700 thus carries the work of two Kyoto painters of the mid and late Edo period.

The Paintings of the Kotohira Shrine Okushoin

The best-known room is the Jōdan no Ma, where Itō Jakuchū's Hyakka-zu (One Hundred Flowers) covers all four sides of a space of just six mats with 201 individual flowers. To halt long-term deterioration, the shrine restored the alcove in 2009, then sent the western wall paintings and 4 sliding-door panels for conservation in November 2021; the work was completed in March 2023.

Most of the other rooms belong to Kishi Gantai, whose paintings dated 1844 change subject from room to room: young pines, irises with waterfowl, swarming butterflies, and a white egret under willows. The back of the four restored Jakuchū panels carries Gantai's young pines in a spring field.

One Jakuchū work is missing. A weeping-willow composition recorded at the Okushoin no longer survives, and the shrine has published an essay tracing a painted fragment of swallows that may have come from it.

Visiting the Kotohira Shrine Okushoin

The Kotohira Shrine Okushoin is normally closed to the public and opens only for special exhibitions. The most recent was the Jakuchū exhibition from April 8 to June 11, 2023, when visitors entered in hourly timed groups, paid 2,000 yen (adults and university students) or 1,000 yen (high school and junior high school students), and photography was not allowed.

On ordinary days the neighboring Omoteshoin is open as a museum (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., last entry 4:30 p.m.). Watch the shrine's official website for future Okushoin openings. Directions and general shrine hours are on the Kotohira Shrine page.