Kenkun Shrine Offering Hall

Kenkun Shrine Offering Hall: where food for the deity is prepared

In Shinto practice, the kami are offered food. Rice, water, salt, seafood, vegetables and fruit are set before the deity in a rite called shinsen, and the place where those offerings are readied has its own name: the shinsen-sho, or offering hall. At Kenkun Shrine on Mount Funaoka in northern Kyoto, the Offering Hall stands just south of the lattice fence around the main sanctuary, its ridge running east to west so that the building faces the honden it serves.

Kenkun Shrine honours Oda Nobunaga together with his son Nobutada. The Offering Hall was built in 1884 (Meiji 17) and moved to its present spot in 1910 (Meiji 43), when the sanctuary was rebuilt near the summit of the hill. It measures five bays by three, roofed in the hip-and-gable manner with layered cypress bark, a finish reserved for buildings of some standing.

Inside, the space is divided along its length into three rooms. To the east lie an earthen-floored work area and a kitchen; the centre holds a board-floored room; the west end is an eight-mat tatami room. Battened ceilings run throughout. A pair of hinged plank doors opens onto the earthen entrance, and slatted sliding doors face the veranda. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a fine example of its type.

Why it is protected

The Offering Hall is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property. This category, created in 1996, protects buildings through notification and guidance rather than the tighter controls of designation, and was framed to save modern structures at risk of loss. The hall was registered on 18 April 2008, in the fifty-ninth round of listings, under the criterion that it contributes to the historic character of the national landscape.

Its value lies partly in completeness. A shrine is not only its sanctuary; it is the whole apparatus of daily and seasonal rite, and the offering hall is where a good deal of that quiet work happens. The clear three-room plan, with kitchen, work floor and tatami room in sequence, shows how such a building was meant to be used. Standing beside the sanctuary, the fence, the storehouse and the guest house, the hall helps preserve an unusually intact Meiji shrine precinct.

What to look for on a visit

The Offering Hall faces the sanctuary from the south, and its cypress-bark roof sets it apart from the tiled outbuildings nearby; bark roofing weathers to a soft, matte surface quite unlike the sheen of tile. The building's honest working character is part of its appeal, the kitchen and earthen floor speaking to the practical side of worship that most visitors never think about.

As a functioning part of the shrine, the hall is not opened for interior visits, so it is viewed from the grounds, which are free to enter. The front approach climbs steep stone steps, with a gentler northern route for those who prefer it. A visit on 19 October, the day of the Funaoka Taisai, offers the best chance to see the shrine's ritual life in motion, the festival that marks Nobunaga's entry into Kyoto in 1568.