Kenkun Shrine Lattice Fence

Kenkun Shrine Lattice Fence: the boundary that frames the sanctuary

A shrine draws a line between the everyday world and the space set apart for the deity. At Kenkun Shrine, high on Mount Funaoka in northern Kyoto, that line takes the form of a lattice fence, or sukibei, that runs around all four sides of the main sanctuary and meets the front at either side of the small hall used for reciting liturgies. It stretches some 55 metres in all.

The shrine honours Oda Nobunaga and his son Nobutada, and reached its present hilltop form in 1910 (Meiji 43), when the sanctuary was rebuilt near the summit. The fence dates from that same year. It rests on a continuous footing of cut stone, with a sill laid on top and square posts rising from it, braced by horizontal rails at knee and lintel height. Bracket arms carry the purlin above, the eaves are framed with spaced rafters, and the whole is roofed with pantiles.

Between the posts, the lower part is a boarded wainscot; above it runs an open diamond lattice, with crossed diagonal members set into the narrow wall panel near the top. The openwork is what gives the sukibei its name and its purpose. It marks the edge of the sacred precinct while letting light and air pass through, holding the space around the sanctuary and lending it a grave, composed air.

Why it is protected, and why the site matters

The fence is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, recorded not as a building but as a structure of another kind. The register, established in 1996, protects such works through notification and guidance, and aims to keep modern heritage from slipping away unnoticed. The fence was listed on 18 April 2008, in the fifty-ninth round, under the criterion that it contributes to the historic character of the national landscape.

Mount Funaoka gives the fence its meaning. In the layout of the ancient capital, the hill served as the northern guardian point, the Genbu of the four directions, and a reference for setting out the city's central axis. Centuries later Toyotomi Hideyoshi obtained imperial sanction to raise a mortuary temple here for Nobunaga; the temple was never finished, but the hill was kept as his sacred ground until the Meiji era, when the shrine was founded by imperial decree. The fence enclosing the sanctuary is the innermost expression of that long-held sense of a set-apart place.

What to look for on a visit

Walk the perimeter of the sanctuary and the fence rewards a slow eye. Notice how the boarded lower section grounds the design while the diamond lattice above keeps it from feeling closed, and how the fence steps up to either side of the liturgy hall at the front, framing the approach to the deity. The cut-stone footing and the neat spaced rafters are worth a second look.

The grounds are open without charge, and from the summit precinct the view opens eastward across the city toward the Higashiyama peaks, Mount Hiei and the great bonfire slope of Daimonji. The front approach climbs a long stair that turns steep near the top, with a gentler northern route as an alternative. On 19 October the Funaoka Taisai fills the enclosed sanctuary court with ceremony, marking the day Nobunaga entered Kyoto in 1568.