Shinkoin Chukodo

A Modern Buddhist Hall Hidden Behind the Main Hall

Walk through the gate of Jinkoin in the quiet farmland fringes of Nishigamo, north Kyoto, and you may not notice the Chukodo at first. The temple's main hall stands prominently along the central axis, and most visitors stop there to face the Kobo Daishi image enshrined within. Yet behind the main hall, set slightly to the northwest and turned to face south, sits a single-story wooden building of remarkable density: the Chukodo, built in 1917 and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in February 2021.

The name chuko-do literally means "Hall of the Restoration." Jinkoin had effectively ceased to function as a Buddhist temple in the upheaval of the early Meiji period, when the anti-Buddhist policies known as haibutsu kishaku swept through the country. The temple was revived in 1878 by the priest Wada Geshin, and the small hall built four decades later carries his legacy in its very name.

From Heian Practice Ground to Three-Kobo Pilgrimage Temple

Jinkoin sits within an old district called Nishigamo, just west of the Kamogawa river upstream of central Kyoto. According to temple tradition, the land was already considered sacred in the early Heian period, when the monk Kukai—better known by his posthumous title Kobo Daishi, the founder of Shingon Buddhism—is said to have practiced here for ninety days at age forty-two. The story goes that on leaving, he carved a wooden image of himself reflected in the temple pond, and that this very figure is the principal image of the main hall today.

The temple as an institution was founded somewhat later, in the fifth year of the Kenpo era (1217), by Keien Shonin at the request of Kamo no Yoshihisa, a senior priest of nearby Kamigamo Shrine. A divine oracle is said to have directed Yoshihisa to "build a hall on the land bathed in numinous light," and the temple's name—Jinkoin, the Temple of Divine Light—preserves that tradition.

By the Edo period, Jinkoin had taken its place alongside To-ji and Ninna-ji as one of the Three Kobo Temples of Kyoto (Kyo Sankobo), forming a pilgrimage circuit visited on the 21st of each month. The temple suffered fire damage during the Tenpo era (1830–1843) and lost much of its building stock during the early Meiji turmoil, before Wada Geshin began the long process of rebuilding from 1878.

Why the Chukodo Was Registered

The Chukodo was registered on 26 February 2021, together with four other temple buildings—the main hall, guest quarters, the Rengetsu-an tea hut, and the front gate. The official designation cites the hall as a "modern Buddhist hall in which creativity is recognized in the eaves of round rafters and the composition of the roof."

That phrasing is more telling than it first appears. Most surviving temple architecture in Japan dates from the medieval period or earlier, and the canon of forms—the pyramidal hogyo-zukuri roof, the hip-and-gable irimoya, the cusped karahafu gable over a porch—was largely fixed by the seventeenth century. A small hall built in 1917 had no obligation to follow any single template. The interest of the Chukodo lies in how its anonymous carpenters drew on multiple roof types at once, and added a detail rarely seen in traditional Japanese temples: rafters of round, rather than square, cross-section.

Reading the Roofs

Stand directly in front of the Chukodo and the building reveals itself in layers. The core volume is square in plan, three bays wide and four bays deep, capped by a pyramidal hogyo roof—a form often used for small Buddhist halls because it gathers the four-sided slopes to a single finial above the central altar.

Onto the front of this pyramid, the carpenters added an irimoya hip-and-gable roof, projecting forward like a hood over the main entrance. Then, from beneath that, a further projection: a kohai worship porch crowned with a karahafu, the gently undulating cusped gable that Japanese architects have used since the medieval period to mark important entrances. The result is a tightly nested sequence of three roof forms, each smaller and lower than the one behind it, drawing the eye toward the door.

Look up at the eaves and you will see the second distinctive feature. Where most Japanese temples use squared kakudaruki rafters, the Chukodo uses marudaruki—rafters turned to a circular section. The choice is unusual in a Buddhist context, and lends the underside of the eaves a softer, more organic rhythm than the crisp shadow-lines of conventional temple eaves.

Inside: An Outer Sanctuary in Tatami, an Inner Sanctuary in Wood

The interior follows a clear hierarchy. The main worship space, the gejin or outer sanctuary, is floored in tatami in the manner of a residential hall, allowing worshippers to sit at ground level. Behind it, the rear portions of the two flanking wakijin bays form a wooden-floored naijin, the inner sanctuary where ritual implements would be kept and the principal image installed.

The Chukodo is not normally open to the public, but the exterior can be appreciated freely from the path behind the main hall. Visitors who wish to enter for prayer should inquire at the temple office in advance.

Around the Hall: Tiles, Tea, and a Cucumber Ritual

The grounds around the Chukodo reward unhurried exploration. Old roof tiles believed to come from the medieval Kawara-dera—a now-vanished temple-workshop where craftsmen of the imperial Mokuryo bureau once fired tiles for the palace—are preserved at Jinkoin, and some of these original tiles are said to be incorporated into the Chukodo itself, a quiet thread connecting the modern hall to a much older local history of tile-making.

A short walk away, just inside the front gate, the small Rengetsu-an thatched cottage marks the last residence of the late-Edo poet and potter Otagaki Rengetsu, who lived here from the autumn of 1866, when she was seventy-six, until her death in 1875. The painter Tomioka Tessai is also said to have spent part of his childhood under the temple's care. The grounds are known for white double-flowered sazanka camellias from December through January, irises in late spring, and crape myrtle in high summer.

Once a year, on 21 July and again on the midsummer Day of the Ox, the temple holds the kyuri-fuji or "cucumber-sealing" ritual. Worshippers buy a cucumber, write their ailment on a slip, and bring it home to bury in the garden; as the cucumber decomposes, the illness is said to dissolve with it. The custom traces to a story that Kukai once sealed pestilence into a cucumber on this site. The day draws a steady local crowd and is one of the few times when Jinkoin loses its everyday quiet.

Beyond Jinkoin

Nishigamo is one of the less-trodden corners of Kyoto, but it is well-connected to better-known sites. Kamigamo Shrine, the World Heritage shrine that historically held authority over this district and from which Jinkoin's founder originally came, lies about twenty minutes' walk to the east along the Kamogawa. Daitoku-ji, the great Rinzai Zen monastery with its constellation of subtemples and stone gardens, is a short bus ride to the south. Walkers heading north from Jinkoin can follow quiet residential lanes up toward Shoden-ji and the bamboo slopes of the Funaoka district.

The Kamogawa itself, broad and shallow here at its upper reaches, is a pleasant walking route in either direction, particularly in late March and early April for cherry blossom and in November for the maples that line its banks.