Anrakuji Temple Gate

A Gate 2.2 Metres Wide, on the National Register

The Anraku-ji Temple Gate (安楽寺山門, Anrakuji Sanmon) stands at Shishigatani Goshonodan-chō in Sakyō Ward, Kyoto City, was built in 1892, and was entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 2003. Its opening measures 2.2 metres across, and side walls extend from either flank.

Small buildings rarely make the national register on their own. This one is classified not as a building but as a structure of another kind, and the reasoning in the official record turns on how thoroughly it was designed. The two main posts are octagonal in section rather than round or square. The supporting posts behind them retain menkawa, the rounded outer face of the log with a strip of bark edge left visible, a finish borrowed straight from teahouse carpentry. Above, unsquared logs serve as the purlins, and the rafters, thin poles rather than sawn timber, radiate outward in a fan.

The roof is hipped and thatched. Carved details sit at selected points. Nothing about the gate is monumental; everything about it is decided. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a sukiya-influenced gate whose design is inseparable from the setting it composes, which is a precise way of saying that the approach to Anraku-ji would not work without it.

The Story the Temple Was Founded to Keep

Anraku-ji is properly Jūrenzan Anraku-ji, an independent temple in the Pure Land tradition, and its name commemorates two priests who were executed. Jūren and Anraku were disciples of Hōnen, founder of the Jōdo school, and they established a hermitage in Shishigatani where they preached the recitation of Amida Buddha's name. Their chanting of the Jōdo raisan, a liturgy of praise, drew listeners. Two women serving at the court of Retired Emperor Go-Toba, known as Matsumushi and Suzumushi, were among them, and they took the tonsure in secret.

The retired emperor's reaction fell on the whole movement. In the suppression of 1207, Jūren and Anraku were beheaded, Hōnen was exiled to Sanuki and his disciple Shinran to Echigo. When Hōnen returned to the capital he ordered the ruined hermitage restored in memory of the two priests, and gave it the mountain name and temple name it still carries. The main hall was moved to the present site in 1681. Statues of the two priests and the two women stand beside the Amida triad, and memorial pagodas for all four are in the grounds.

Stand at the gate and this history is announced before you enter: a stone pillar in front of it is inscribed with a phrase marking the place as the origin point of the Jōdo raisan. The gate itself dates from 1892, six and a half centuries after the events it fronts, which is a useful reminder that a temple's oldest story and its oldest surviving woodwork are seldom the same age.

Getting In, and When

Anraku-ji is closed for most of the year. It opens on a limited schedule in spring and again in autumn, timed to cherry blossom, azalea, satsuki azalea and maple, and the published pattern has been from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon with an admission fee of 500 yen. Dates shift annually and are announced by the temple, so check before travelling; group visits by other temples have been accepted separately when they do not conflict with services.

One fixed date is worth planning around. Every 25 July the temple holds the Shishigatani pumpkin memorial, a summer observance at which visitors are served cooked Shishigatani pumpkin, a gourd-shaped local variety, with a prayer against paralytic illness. Entry is generally accepted between nine and three on that day, at a higher admission than the seasonal openings.

The gate sits at the southwest corner of the precinct at the top of a shallow flight of stone steps, facing west. That means the steps, the thatch and the trees behind it line up into a single view from the lane below, and it is the reason this gate is photographed far more often than it is walked through. The approach is outside the ticket gate, so the exterior can be seen even on closed days, though the interior and garden cannot.

Reaching it takes a short walk from the Path of Philosophy. City buses stop at Kinrin Shako-mae and Shinnyodō-mae, roughly fifteen minutes away on foot. Hōnen-in, which also has a thatched gate, is a few minutes north, and Reikan-ji is nearby to the south; the three make a compact route.