Ninnaji Temple Shinden

What Is Ninnaji Temple Shinden?

Ninnaji Temple Shinden (仁和寺宸殿, Ninna-ji Shinden) is the ceremonial hall at the center of the palace compound of Ninnaji in Omuro-Ouchi, Ukyo Ward, Kyoto City; it was completed in 1914 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 28, 2011.

For roughly a thousand years Ninnaji was led by abbots born into the imperial family, and the southwest corner of the grounds still holds the residence that gave the temple its old name, Omuro Gosho, the Omuro Palace. Covered corridors connect the White Study Hall (Shiroshoin), the Black Study Hall (Kuroshoin) and the Reimeiden to the Shinden, which sits in the middle and was reserved for formal rites.

The building you see is a replacement. After the temple was rebuilt in the seventeenth century, a residential hall donated from the imperial palace served as the Shinden, but a fire in 1887 destroyed it along with most of the palace buildings. A stopgap Shinden, the present White Study Hall, went up in 1890, and a proper successor had to wait for the Taisho era.

The design came from Kameoka Suekichi, an architect on the staff of Kyoto Prefecture. The Agency for Cultural Affairs counts Ninnaji Temple Shinden among his representative works.

Why Ninnaji Temple Shinden Is Registered

The hall was registered under the criterion of serving as a model of design. What the Agency singles out is the way it joins two different residential traditions, one outside and one inside.

From the garden the building reads as shinden-zukuri, the mansion style of Heian-period aristocrats, under a hip-and-gable (irimoya) roof covered in cypress bark (Hiwadabuki) instead of tile. The temple's own multilingual commentary points out that this roofing follows the Shishinden, the ceremonial hall of the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Step inside and the logic changes to Shoin-zukuri: three tatami rooms in a row, divided by sliding panels.

The hall measures 19.7 m by 11.8 m, with a building area of 257 square metres, all timber and on one floor. On the east side a wing juts toward the garden, recalling the chumonro corridor that led from the main house of a Heian mansion into its forecourt. That wing is what makes the exterior unmistakably palace-like.

The Agency describes the design, inside and out, as graceful and suited to a temple of imperial rank. In short, Ninnaji Temple Shinden is a Taisho-era architect's reconstruction of a lost palace hall, pieced together from historical styles rather than copied from a single model.

Highlights: Hara Zaisen's Panels and the Two Gardens

Every painted panel and wall in the three rooms is by Hara Zaisen, head of the Hara school, a Kyoto workshop that had long painted sliding doors for the imperial palace. Peonies, geese and other seasonal motifs run across the rooms. Choosing a court painter for a hall modeled on court architecture tells you how seriously the rebuilders took the brief.

Gardens frame Ninnaji Temple Shinden on both sides. The South Garden is a plain field of raked white sand with a cherry tree and a mandarin-orange tree planted in the positions they occupy before the imperial throne hall. The North Garden is a pond garden with an artificial hill; the Hitotei teahouse sits on the slope, and the Five-Story Pagoda rises beyond it.

Stand on the north veranda and look northeast across the water. The upper roofs of the pagoda clear the treetops, and the eaves of the Shinden crop the scene like a picture frame. Walk around to the south side and the mood flips: an open expanse of white sand, with the curved gable of the Imperial Envoy Gate small in the distance.

The east wing is easiest to read from the eastern edge of the South Garden, where its lower roof separates clearly from the main roof.

Visiting Ninnaji Temple Shinden

Ninnaji Temple Shinden lies inside the paid area called the Ninnaji Palace Garden (Goshoteien); walking the open temple grounds will not bring you close to it. The route runs through the Grand Entrance and the White Study Hall to the Shinden, loops past the Reimeiden and the Black Study Hall, and returns. It follows the verandas on both the south and north sides of the Shinden, so both gardens can be seen from this one building.

The temple allows personal photography in the grounds but not inside worship halls or the treasure museum. The Palace Garden route map marks suggested photo points around the Shinden; for the painted panels indoors, follow the signs on site.

Opening hours, admission and directions to the temple are covered on the Ninnaji Temple page.