Hokaiji Amida Hall

Five Bays Square with a Pent Roof, National Treasure since 1951

Hokaiji Amida Hall (法界寺阿弥陀堂, Hokaiji Amidado) stands at Hino Nishiomichi-cho, Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture, designated a National Treasure on 9 June 1951. It had become an Important Cultural Property on 28 December 1897. The quantity is one building and the owner is Hokaiji.

Its form is five bays by five bays, single storey with a pent roof, pyramidal roof, cypress bark. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the period as early Kamakura, 1185 to 1274.

That is a span of eighty-nine years, and the commentary explains why.

No Settled View of the Date

The Agency's commentary opens on the question of date.

There is no settled view of when the hall was built and the date is not clear, but on the evidence of its manner it appears to be a work of the early Kamakura period.

No settled view, not clear: the record states the absence outright, and only then offers the inference from style.

The range of 1185 to 1274 in the date field answers to that inference. Neither document nor inscription gives a year, so manner is the only handle.

Other entries have used probably or appears to be. Here it is the absence of a settled view that is set down.

A One-Bay Sanctuary Within Five

The plan is described precisely.

Five bays square, pyramidal roof, cypress bark, with a pent roof around it giving a square plan. A pent roof is a lower roof and wall skirt set outside the core, so the building reads as two levels from outside while structurally having one.

The inner sanctuary is one bay square, with an altar at its centre. Within a building five bays square stands a sanctuary of one. The outside is wide and the centre small.

On the altar is a seated Amida figure of the standard great size. The figure carries a designation separate from the hall.

A pyramidal roof gathers its four slopes to a single point. It answers to a square plan, and together with the five-bay footprint it fixes how this hall stands.

Painting on Columns and Ceiling Alike

Of the decoration inside, the Agency writes as follows.

Heavenly beings and other designs are painted on the columns, the ceiling and the panels above the tie beams.

Not the walls alone: the columns and the ceiling carry painting too. Every surface inside is covered.

Heavenly beings are shown dancing or playing instruments. The Agency says only heavenly beings and other designs and gives no further detail.

Accounts elsewhere call these among the oldest such paintings in Japan, but the Agency's record contains no comparison of dates. This article follows the record and goes no further than what is painted.

Unlike the Phoenix Hall

The Agency's assessment takes the form of a comparison.

The hall is exceedingly clean in its overall pitch and generous in feeling, and among halls of the same Pure Land type it shows a character different from the Phoenix Hall at Byodoin and others.

A character different is the phrase that carries the assessment. Within the class of Pure Land halls, being unlike the others is what is named.

Exceedingly clean means without excess and well ordered; generous means unhurried, not fussed over in detail. Neither splendour nor fineness of work is what is praised, but these two.

The Agency's related entries list the Pure Land hall at Jodoji and the central hall and side corridors of the Phoenix Hall. Halls of this type exist in numbers, and the question is where this one stands among them.

Access follows the temple's practice. The hall is at Hino Nishiomichi-cho, Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City; check hours and admission before travelling.