Tofukuji Temple's Gekkamon Gate (Gekkamon Gate)

A Gate That Answers to Two Names

Gekkamon Gate (月下門, also written 月華門 and romanised Gekka-mon) stands on the northern approach within the Tofukuji Temple precinct in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, is dated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs to the early Muromachi period between 1333 and 1392, and was designated an Important Cultural Property on 31 July 1902. It is a four-legged gate, shikyakumon in Japanese, with a gabled roof laid in cypress bark shingles.

The two written forms of the name sound identical when spoken. 月下 places the moon overhead, 月華 speaks of its brilliance, and the temple's own signage and the national database both carry the pair together. Neither spelling has displaced the other in more than a century of official record.

A four-legged gate takes its name from its framing: two main posts carrying the ridge, braced front and back by four subsidiary posts. The form is old and was used for gates of rank rather than for service entrances. Here the roof is finished in hiwadabuki, overlapping layers of cypress bark pinned with bamboo nails, a covering that reads as soft and slightly furred against the sharper line of a tiled roof and that belongs to court and temple architecture rather than to ordinary building.

The Palace Story, and What the Record Says

Accounts repeated at the temple and in guides to Kyoto hold that in Bunei 5, corresponding to 1268, the regent Ichijo Sanetsune founded the Joraku-an complex here and received this gate from Emperor Kameyama, who is said to have granted it from the imperial palace, where a Gekkamon stood among the inner gates. The story would make the structure a piece of court architecture transplanted into a Zen monastery.

The national database is more reserved. It assigns the gate to the early Muromachi period, a span of roughly 1333 to 1392, and records no founding narrative at all. The gap between the two accounts is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over: the transmitted history points to 1268, the official dating to the decades either side of the Nanbokucho division. Some commentators have tried to reconcile them by noting that details such as the board-shaped kaerumata struts above the lintel retain features associated with Kamakura-period work, which would suit a structure older than its dated fabric suggests, or one rebuilt using earlier members.

What is beyond dispute is how early the designation came. The record number is 00224, and the date of 31 July 1902 places the gate among the first cohort of buildings protected under the Meiji-era law for the preservation of ancient shrines and temples, enacted in 1897. Tofukuji was founded in 1236 by the regent Kujo Michiie, and this gate and the Rokuharamon are generally counted among the oldest structures still standing on the grounds.

Today the gate functions as the outer entrance to Fumon-in, part of the Joraku-an group that includes the Kaisando founder's hall, where the temple's founding priest Enni is enshrined.

Looking at It

The gate keeps its doors shut. Visitors pass it rather than through it, which turns out to be the better way to see it: standing back on the approach, north of Gaunkyo Bridge, you get the whole silhouette at once instead of a frame overhead.

Give the roof a moment. Cypress bark takes a different edge from tile, thick at the eaves and cut in a line that looks almost drawn rather than laid, and it weathers to a grey-brown that sits oddly and pleasantly against the red of the timber. Then look up under the eaves at the bracketing and the struts. The proportions are lighter than the massive gates further into the complex, which is what you would expect from a gate meant for arrivals of rank rather than for hauling.

Reaching it costs nothing. The gate sits on the open approach that most visitors walk between Tofukuji Station and the ticket points, so it can be seen at any reasonable hour. Enni's hall and Fumon-in beyond it are reached by a different route, through the paid Tsutenkyo and Kaisando course, priced at 600 yen for adults outside the autumn season and 1,000 yen from mid-November to early December.

One practical note the temple stresses: pets are asked not to be brought near the designated structures, this gate included, and tripods are not permitted anywhere in the precinct. From Kyoto Station the trip is three minutes on the JR Nara Line to Tofukuji Station and about ten minutes on foot.