Chion-in Temple

Five Buildings, Two Designations Eighty-Seven Years Apart

Chion-in (知恩院) is the head temple of the Jodo sect at Hayashishitacho, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto City, and five of its buildings, raised between 1635 and 1641, are designated Important Cultural Properties: the Great Abbot's Hall, the Small Abbot's Hall, the Assembly Hall, the Great Kitchen and the Small Kitchen. The quantity is five. The two abbot's halls were listed on 29 August 1910; the assembly hall and the two kitchens followed on 29 May 1997, eighty-seven years later.

A caution first. Chion-in holds two National Treasures, the main gate of 1621 and the Founder's Hall rebuilt in 1639. Both are separate designations and are not among the five treated here. What follows concerns the range of abbot's halls and kitchens running south and east from the Founder's Hall.

All five are products of the early Edo period and of building on a scale only the Tokugawa could fund. After the fire of 1633 destroyed almost every structure in the precinct except the Seishido, the sutra repository and the main gate, the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered reconstruction.

The Two Abbot's Halls, Listed in 1910

The Great and Small Abbot's Halls both date from 1641 and are known as the finest shoin buildings in Kyoto. A corridor joins them, at the far end of the walkway leading from the Founder's Hall.

The Great Abbot's Hall is built in shoin form. Around a central Crane Room are ranged the upper, middle and lower chambers along with rooms named for pine, plum, willow, heron, chrysanthemum and bamboo. Each is finished with gold-ground paintings by Kano Naonobu, Kano Masanobu and other painters of the Kano school, and the upper chamber holds a musha-kakushi, a concealed alcove for a bodyguard. This was where important visitors were received, and the richness of the interior states that function directly.

The Small Abbot's Hall has six rooms and is finished, by contrast, in ink painting. It served as the residence of the head of the temple. The pairing of an outward-facing hall of audience with an inward-facing hall of living, written into two buildings raised in the same year, is the point of the pair.

A garden wraps around both halls. Attributed to the monk Gyokuen, associated with Kobori Enshu, it is a stroll garden around a pond shaped as the character for heart, with the Kian tearoom and the Gongendo beyond. The garden is a nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty.

The Assembly Hall and the Two Kitchens, Listed in 1997

The Assembly Hall dates from 1635 and is also called the Honen Shonin Hall. It doubles as the entrance to the abbot's garden, and the ticket desk for paid admission sits here. A covered walkway links it to the Founder's Hall, making it the hinge through which visitors pass into the range of abbot's halls.

The Great Kitchen, also called Sekkoden, was rebuilt during the Kan'ei era, between 1624 and 1645. A temple kitchen is the working half of the institution, the place where food is prepared and fire is handled daily. The Small Kitchen attaches to it.

These three waited until 1997 for the same reason the kitchen block at Obai-in waited until 1976. Early designations concentrated on spaces of worship and reception, and the service buildings that kept a temple running were treated as background. The frame of judgement shifted through the late Showa and into the Heisei period, when evidence of how a temple functioned as an organisation began to count as historical material in its own right. Two abbot's halls listed in 1910 and an assembly hall with two kitchens added eighty-seven years later record that shift exactly.

Why Five Buildings Form One Item

The Great Abbot's Hall alone is a leading example of early Edo shoin architecture. The Great Kitchen alone is a temple scullery. Only with all five in view does the working shape of a head temple emerge.

The hall of audience and ceremony, the abbot's living quarters, the assembly hall that receives visitors, and the two kitchens that fed everyone: the arrangement is a system rather than a decorative scheme, and the sequence of buildings states who did what and where. All five are joined by the continuous corridor running from the Founder's Hall, so they form one physical space as well as one designation.

That corridor is itself one of the seven wonders of Chion-in. Running some 550 metres from the Founder's Hall through the Assembly Hall to the two abbot's halls, it is called the nightingale floor because walking on it produces a sound like birdsong. The quieter you try to be, the more it sings. Tradition holds that it announced intruders. The circulation that ties the five buildings together is itself part of what makes them a group.

Visiting

Walking the precinct is free. Of the five, the Assembly Hall can be entered at no charge, as can the covered walkway linking the Founder's Hall and the Amida Hall to it.

The abbot's garden is paid, and its desk sits inside the Assembly Hall. From the garden you can see the exteriors of both abbot's halls and how the pond is composed around them. Admission is 400 yen for adults to the abbot's garden, 300 yen to the Yuzen garden and 500 yen for a combined ticket. The desk is open from 9:00 a.m. to 3:50 p.m. and the gates close at 4:30 p.m. Times vary by season, so check the temple's official site before travelling.

The interiors of the two abbot's halls are normally closed and can be seen only during irregular special openings. That is the only occasion to compare the gold-ground paintings of the Great Hall with the ink paintings of the Small. Photography inside the buildings is prohibited, so anyone wanting a record will be working from the exteriors seen across the garden. Dates for special openings are announced on the official site.

From the Chion-in-mae stop on the Kyoto city bus it is about five minutes on foot; from Higashiyama Station on the Tozai subway line, eight to thirteen minutes; from Gion-Shijo Station on the Keihan Main Line, ten to eighteen. Gion and Yasaka Shrine are both within walking distance.