Shinshoji Temple Main Gate

A Stone Gate to Match a Stone Hall

The Shinshoji Temple Main Gate (新照寺正門, Shinshō-ji Seimon) is a stone gateway built in 1895 at Shinshoji Temple in Sumiyoshi, Aira City, Kagoshima Prefecture, and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on April 18, 2008, under registration number 46-0070.

It stands south of the main hall, at the point where a sloping path from the road in front levels out. The opening is 3.1 meters wide. A stone post rises on each side, and from each post a low stone wing wall, or sodebei, runs outward. There is no roof over the passage: the entrance is framed by capped posts and walls alone.

According to Aira City, the Shinshoji Temple Main Gate and the stone wall were completed together two years after the main hall, funded by a donor the city names as 水流金太郎.

Why the Shinshoji Temple Main Gate Was Registered

It was listed for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs closes its description by noting that the gate gives the stone main hall a matching entrance. A timber hall would normally get a timber gate; here a stone hall got a stone one. It is the first thing you see as you come up the slope, and it sets the character of the whole temple front.

The hall itself was begun, Aira City says, by members of a kakure nenbutsu confraternity, Jōdo Shinshū believers who had kept their faith hidden until the ban on it was lifted in 1876. The main gate came afterward, one of the donated additions that completed the temple's outer works around the new hall.

Chamfered Posts and Curved Capstones

Look first at the corners of the posts. The stone posts are 3.4 meters tall, and their edges are not left square: each is worked into a stepped chamfer called kichōmen, a detail normally cut into the corners of timber posts and furniture. Reproducing it in stone meant slow, careful work by the masons.

On top of each post sits a kasaishi, a capstone, and its upper surface is carved with a gentle upward curve so the ends lift slightly, like the eaves of a tiled roof. A flat slab would have done the job. The same curve turns up on the corner capstones of the stone wall and on the lintel stone of the side gate, and the agency treats it as a sign that all three were built at the same time.

The wing walls on either side are laid in 6 courses of stone, with capstones of their own. From the front, the tall central posts and the lower wing walls stepping out to each side give the gate its outline.

Visiting the Shinshoji Temple Main Gate

The gate is the entrance to the temple grounds, and you can walk up the slope from the road to stand right in front of it. The chamfered edges and the curve of the capstones are clearest from close by, looking up. From the bottom of the slope the posts and wing walls read as a single shape.

Beyond the gate are the grounds of a working temple. Be mindful of any services under way, and take photographs from a spot where you are not blocking the path.