Imamiya Shrine Tower Gate East Corridor

East of the Gate

This corridor stands a little apart to the east of the Romon, running on an east-west ridge as the mirror of the west corridor. It was built in 1926, in the same campaign as the gate.

Like its counterpart, it is three bays across and one bay deep, gabled and roofed in formal hongawara tile, with lattice windows on the front and back and plank doors closing both gable ends. Bracket struts in the intercolumnar spaces carry boat-shaped brackets.

What Distinguishes the East Corridor

Where the west corridor draws attention with its extended corner pillars and strongly curved roofline, the east corridor concentrates its interest in the gable. Above the tie-beam the gable is framed with a frog-leg strut, a large bearing block and projecting three-way brackets, the de-mitsudo.

The detail carving draws on design from the medieval period and earlier, and it is this archaic vocabulary, worked in the 1920s, that earns the building its description in the national record as a corridor of quality.

Registration and How to Read the Pair

The east corridor was registered in March 2018 under the criterion of serving as a model of design. Read it against the west corridor: the shared plan and tiling make the two obviously a pair, while the difference between the west's curved roofline and the east's carved gable shows the carpenters varying their handling within a single scheme.